As a Texan I Should Have Seen This Coming

There was an article a few days ago in the WSJ called The Yellow Prose of Texas? Secession Movement Blooms in Fiction by Miguel Bustillo, and boy does it ever fill me with regret.

A couple of years ago I remember talking about the secession movement in Texas with a buddy of mine. We both agreed that it was terrifically silly, but that as a chance to brainstorm and pontificate it provided lots of material. I should have made that next jump and thought about it in terms of thriller writing and fiction.

the Prose of Texas article is all about people who took that spark that I remember and blew on it to make it flame up. You want to know what? I think they all sound like lots of fun and if I didn't already have so many other ideas I'd probably start trying to think of my own.


"The Secession of Texas" by Darrell Maloney of San Antonio envisions an independent Texas with its own border patrol, guarding against people trying to sneak into the country illegally—from Oklahoma.

"Lone Star Daybreak" by Erik L. Larson of Houston tells the story of recruits in the Texas Defense Force, a militia that protects the separatist state from Yankee armies. "Yellow Rose of Texas" by Dennis Snyder describes a U.S. saddled with $22 trillion in debt, a defanged military and a leftist president who promises to remove religion from public life, prompting an armed and economically vibrant Texas to declare that it has had enough.

Like I said, they all sound like fun and at least one needs to be on the to be read list. I will say this though, the next time I'm at a friends house and ponitificating the strangeness of a movement or an event or anything at all, I'm going to try and imagine a "what if" scenario and find a way to write it into a book.

Thriller Writers Listen Up

I may not ever read the book that inspired this post by James Scott Bell at The Kill Zone, I find most 40's and 50's noir to be much the same, but this post, 11 Keys to Making Your Novel a Page Turner has some good advice.

There are some really good passages in there to read, but the eleven keys are:


1. A decent guy just trying to find his place in the world
2. The trouble starts on page one
3. Unpredictability
4. A nasty but charming bad guy
5. Sympathy for the bad guy
6. A spiral of trouble
7. A love triangle
8. A crisp style
9. A relentless pace with a tightening noose
10. Honor
11. A resonant ending

Without the supporting text some of these may be scoffed at, but whilst scoffing I encourage you to jump over to post and read the passages following each key. You will find great advice like this that bolsters the second key, starting the trouble on page one:


HE WAS DRIVING AN MG—a low English-built sports car— and he was a tire-squeaker, the way a wrong kind of guy is apt to be in a sports car. I heard the squeal of his tires as he gunned it, and then I saw him cutting in front of me like a red bug. My car piled into his and the bug turned over, spilling him and the girl with him out onto the street.

Turns out the other guy and girl are not hurt. The guy walks over to Jim and sucker punches him. He's about to stomp Jim's face into hamburger when the girl who was with him grabs him from behind.

The guy's name is Buddy Brown. The girl is Wild Kearney (her real name. Love it!) And immediately Jim is drawn to her—another noir trope. She is a "bronze-blonde" but "looked like the kind of girl that would be with winners, not losers, top winners in the top tournaments and never the second-flight or the almost-good-enough. Not the kind of girl that I'd ever known."

So here we have both violence and potential romance from the start. And the Lead is vulnerable in both toughness and love.

The rule here is simple: Don't warm up your engines. Get the reader turning the page not because he's patient with you, but because he needs to find out what is going to happen next!

I have that series about the importance of first lines and first passages. Whenever I need to spell out why I continue that series I might refer to that final paragraph. "Get the reader turning the page not because he's patient with you, but because he needs to find out what is going to happen next!"

Anyway it's a good post, well worth reading to provide a boost to any writer. And who knows, maybe I will read John McPartland's Big Red's Daughter. If it pulled James Scott Bell into a "fictive dream" it might be well worth the time.

Word Wiz Jr

It's a Saturday so I won't feel too bad about slipping in a post that's not related to writing or publishing. I have a series about words my kiddo's say (here), and today I'm adding a couple more.

First, my three year old was running around for weeks saying "I'm a Biz-ommy." Had NO idea what this meant. At least not until he held his hands up and came at me like Frankenstein's monster. He's a "big zombie" don't you see. I liked it.

He also pointed at the helicopter and said, "Heli-hop-ter" which I also thought was apropos.

The Book is Better than the Opening

I'm trying a new book, from a writer I don't know, that seems fairly political. The Girl Who Cried Wolf by Robert Ferrigno is so far a fun and interesting book to read. The first line would have to be pigeon-holed in the "not so great" category though. In fact the first few chapters should be slated as such. Thankfully it picked up by chapter five.

GLENN PUMPED AWAY on the swing, rusty chains creaking as he watched the last of the sunbathers lazing on their towels, legs crossed, bodies tangled. Music drifted from cars in the parking lot. Little kids played tag with the crashing waves, foam tickling their bare feet as they dashed out of reach, squealing. He swung higher now, pulling himself straight into the clear blue sky, leaving the earth behind. The setting sun hung just above the horizon, the Pacific streaked with red and purple and gold. Toxic as far as the eye could see. If he thought about it too hard, his head would explode. 

Eli rinsed off under the shower at the edge of the beach. A short, muscular surf rat in knee-length jams, he was an amped-up nineteen-year-old with crackling blue eyes and sun-bleached dreads. He turned off the shower, shook out his hair, and sauntered over to the swing set. “Tree’s still not back? You think something’s wrong?” 

“Everything’s wrong.”

Ferrigno, Robert - The Girl Who Cried Wolf

It doesn't necessarily make me want to read on, but it's not too too bad. Truth be told, I almost put the novel down at about chapter three. But, like I said, chapters five and onward make it worthwhile.

Following a New Blog

If you look to the right you'll find links to the blogs that I commonly go check out. I've added to the list recently. I've found that most bloggers who run their own blogs, as compared to blogs that have a host of writers who write an article once a week or once every two weeks a la The Kill Zone, are far more apt to stop posting for several weeks even months at a time. This is an occurrence that I try to avoid.

Nevertheless whilst rambling around Thriller Ink I found this article by James N. Roses entitled Maybe I Write My Book Backward. It's a really good article. It was good enough, anyway, to make me eschew reposting an article on writer self discipline that was posted on The Kill Zone.

Mr. Roses is experiencing a bit of an author identity crisis. He's not sure what genre his books truly fall into. He says:

I guess I could always label my books as dramatic, contemporary thriller/mystery fiction novels, but I’m yet to come across that section in the bookshop.

Then goes on to say:

I feel it is important to just tell the story I want to tell. So far my novels are based in the real world, no sci-fi as yet, and because of this, my work will always include the highs and the lows, the problems and the solutions if there any, and good and the bad, the serious and the funny.

So, why do I find this compelling? Years ago while shopping around Toe the Line I ran across an agent who disagreed with a premise in my query. I wrote imagine Dick Francis with a focus on adventure racing instead of horse racing. Then later I wrote that it was a mystery. This agent said that I was wrong in choosing mystery as a genre and saying that I write like a thriller writer like Dick Francis.

I remember I chose mystery for a reason. I read many many books on writing and publishing (see here) and most of them identified or defined mystery in a certain way and thrillers in a different way. I chose mystery for a specific reason. Among many other reasons I remember an editor I had defined Thrillers as needing to have international destinations and globe trotting protagonists.

Slightly simplistic? Sure. I found it funny that that editor, who had several oddities, his thriller definition not at all the strangest, but that there are so many blurred lines in the industry. Does Dick Francis write thrillers or mysteries? Does Diane Mott Davidson write thrillers or mysteries? Its a funny, blurry line in so many cases.

Unlimited Funds Please

So far I've only been able to purchase four (perhaps five depending on how you see it) e-readers. I got my first e-reader, a 2nd Generation Kindle, back in February 14th. I think the iPad came next. Then the iPhone, the 3rd Generation Kindle, and finally the Kindle Touch. I know that a while back I thought about Nook, but  mostly I just wish I could test drive these suckers before I buy them so I can tell just what kind of differences there truly are.

What started this thinking? This article in the WSJ called The Best E-Reader: Kobo's Aura HD.

According to the article the Aura HD is:

the first model that rivals the printed page. The biggest improvement is the screen—it displays text at 265 dots per inch (dpi), compared with the Kindle Paperwhite's 212 dpi or the Nook SimpleTouch's 167 dpi. While the differences between the numbers may seem relatively inconsequential, the Aura HD's higher resolution makes text markedly sharper. The screen is slightly larger, too: 6.8 inches diagonal instead of the 6 inches that are standard today—a subtle increase that fits considerably more words on each page.

But, and this is what I don't like about e-readers in general:

For those who have invested in e-books from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, switching to the Aura HD won't be easy. Most e-books purchased from each store are only viewable on that brand's devices. (Hopefully, this will change; six years after the iTunes Store launched, it began selling music that could be played on any device, not just iPods.) But Kobo's store is just as sprawling as its competitors', with over 3 million titles.

It will be nice one day when I can read an e-book on any e-reader, but that's a different post. Right now, how bout a loaner site? A rent-to-own e-reader company that will send you an e-reader to try for a bit before you decide to buy it. Conversely I could just become a better writer, get more followers and have one sent to me for review. I'll start noodling both of these tactics. Eventually one will come true.

List of Twenty

Over at The Kill Zone Boyd Morrison has a post on Hunting Down the Muse. It's all about what authors and writers should do when they are looking for their next book idea.

I've heard many of the techniques he brings up, from continuing on in your daily writing routine to writing what you know, etc. One I had never heard before was using a list of twenty.

Writing down twenty ideas. The first ten will be typical. It's those last ten that will make a write use their creativity and strive to make an idea unique. Thinking outside the box so to speak.


One technique that I’m trying was suggested by my agent. It’s called the List of Twenty. You come up with a list of twenty of ideas for a novel. The first ten or so will be obvious, so obvious that someone else may be having the same idea as you’re typing (which is why we end up with situations like two movies this year about the White House being taken over by terrorists).

But when you exhaust those first ten ideas, you start having to come up with more unusual and off-the-wall ideas, and that’s where you find the gold. Those are the ideas likelier to be unique and amazing.

It's not a bad idea. I hope to have to use it soon cause that will mean that I am done with my third novel.

First and Perhaps the Last

So I am reading another J.A. Konrath book, this time it's Dirty Martini, and I'm not sure that it's going to inspire me to read anymore.

Now that I am fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plumb series, which anyone who has read this blog would know (if not see here), and which is rather strange considering my history, I don't know if I'm going to be reading another Konrath book from the Jack Daniel's series. Ostensibly they are similar styles but Konrath's are less refined and more gory. I'm not sure if I'm a big enough fan of gore to warrant another investment in the series.

As far as the first line goes, not too great category for sure:


No security cameras this time, but he still has to be careful. The smaller the store, the more likely he’ll be remembered. 

He’s dressed for the part. The mustache is fake. So is the shoulder-length hair. His facial jewelry is all clip-on, including the nose ring and the lip ring, and his combat boots have lifts in them, adding almost three inches to his height. He’s wearing a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt that he picked up at a thrift shop for a quarter, under a red flannel shirt that cost little more. The long sleeves hide the tube. 

When they interview witnesses later, they’ll remember his costume, but not his features.

Kilborn, Jack; Konrath, J.A.  - Dirty Martini

Sorry, just not good enough or intriguing enough to be in the great category of first lines. But that might be part of the reason that I'm not inspired to read more from the series.

Three-Fer

This is going to be a three-fer in that this post is going to provide a first line, a last line and a review of a book that I read most recently. It was a bit of a short story or novella, so there wasn't too much to it. That being said there were some gems there that I wanted to point out. The first and last lines weren't stunning, at least not as stunning as some of the analogies which are near the end of this post.

First line:


"That's the last time you break a date with me, Jimmy Gallagher. I'll thank you not to call on me again!" 

Me and Ruby were sitting in Charley's on Figueroa, where Ruby waits tables. She wasn't working at the moment, though. She was busy being steamed and I couldn't blame her. She doesn't like me fighting, and the night before I'd been in a bout set up by a pal, Kenny Spivey. He was moving a lot of dough and needed me for the card. He's got a little girl with polio and that can run into money, so I thought I'd help him out by taking on a local boy making his way up the ladder. He was a big kid, young and strong, but I know a few things after twenty-five years of lacing up the gloves (I started when I was ten back there in Boston, Golden Gloves).


Last line:


“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said. “Forgive me?” I put my hand under her chin, tilted her head up and kissed her lips. I looked into her deep blue lamps and said, “I will this time, honey. But don’t let it happen again.”

Bell, James Scott- Fight City

Like I said there are a lot of great analogies in this sucker. It takes place in the 1950's with a first person point of view and the patois of that time. My favorite I put up at the top. The others are short and sweet like rabbit punches that are thrown in throughout the novel.



I looked up and saw a big side of beef coming at me. He wore an open collared short-sleeved shirt. His arms had muscles in places where most men don't have places.

Then there were these three:


My thoughts were oatmeal, sloshing around in my skull.


Jack Walsh hit me in the stomach with a fist made of reinforced concrete.


Time ticked by as slow as a Scotsman counting his coins.

One of the things I hate is figuring out what to read between novels. I will get to the end of a long book and have really enjoyed it, then I'll want to get to the next good novel, but I'm not quite ready to make the switch. This is a switch book. It's short, fun, and made for a great switch book. The one thing I didn't like was that it read like a series of disparate vignettes and there was no circling back and linking it all together into fully cohesive story. There was no sum up. It was just Jimmy trying to make a date and overcoming the hurdles that the world threw at him. I would have liked to see a bit more cohesiveness to all the hurdles and challenges.

Still, anyone who is looking for a switch book or a inbetweener book, this was a good one.

Quick Turn Around

I may have enjoyed Andromeda Strain too much. The first line I posted yesterday, the last line is today. I didn't even allow anyone to truly let that first line sink in before I closed the circle with today's post.

“But things are now under control,” Stone said. “We have the organism, and can continue to study it. We’ve already begun to characterize a variety of mutant forms. It’s a rather astonishing organism in its versatility.” He smiled. “I think we can be fairly confident that the organism will move into the upper atmosphere without causing further difficulty on the surface, so there’s no problem there. And as for us down here, we understand what’s happening now, in terms of the mutations. That’s the important thing. That we understand.” 

“Understand,” Hall repeated. 

“Yes,” Stone said. “We have to understand.”

Crichton, Michael -The Andromeda Strain 

As last lines go it can hardly be called compelling, particularly when compared to the first line, neither would I put it up against some of the best last lines and passages that I've compiled over in the last lines series and hope to get a win. 

What I find interesting, and this is where this post is going to serve as last line and book review, is that I found the book wholly unexceptional. I liked it, don't get me wrong. It was interesting and quick and fun to read, but exceptional? Hardly.

Crichton exceptional means Jurrasic Park or Prey. This didn't make the cut. Neither did State of Fear, sadly, which I felt was preachy and poorly written. Still, what I like about going back and reading thrillers from this era is that it shows me that I'm on the right track. There was nothing in Andromeda Strain that couldn't have written myself in a different way and just as compellingly. There is hope for aspiring authors to do something great, eventually. The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, Red Storm Rising, Digital Fortress, all of these serve to show that authors who went on to great renown and eventually great writing started somewhere. Hopefully I'm starting somewhere near the same place.