Always Good to Get Glowing Reviews

It's always good to get a glowing review, even from a "Devoted Mommy of 3."

The blog DevotedMommyof3 is written by "a housewife and mother of 3 boys (19,16, 10) writes on daily life, rural living, and being the only girl in a house full of boys."

This is one of the blogs that was identified for the Blog Tour that Sage Adderly put together. She writes today in her blog:

Dick Hannah has created one fantastic novel. Simply put- I love it. There were a lot of plates spinning & he didn’t drop any. What I’d thought would be a simple mystery novel became multiple novels in one: family drama, thriller, a little romance, inspirational- you name it! Fingers are crossed for a sequel. Five stars straight through- brilliant!

I'll take the praise and hope it transfers into further sales.

Not Punchy

I don't think I'm punchy enough for Twitter, but that being said, I do Tweet.

My Twitter handle is "Novelogism" . . . a combination of Neologism and Novelling. When I combine the definitions I get:

A new book that may be in the process of entering common use.

This morning I tweeted a passage from Les Miserables. Generally I tweet passages or words that strike my fancy. This one hit my fancy pretty hard. This passage occurs right as Fantine is on Death's door and Jean Valjean is about to be confronted by Javert.

The branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a flower, and seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time. The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives in which the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.

I think that's some amazing stuff. There is alot of writing in Les Miserables that would never make the cut these days. We are far too focused on getting to the heart of the matter. What Hugo takes three chapters to say would be written in a couple of sentences now days. But, there are those passages that can be separated from the rest, like this one, that really make the whole magilla so much better than the rest.

Novel Release

I can't wait to see what happens in the next couple of days. Sage has provided me the list of dates and blogs below and I can't wait to see what the bloggers think of my new novel, On the Edge (prospective readers can buy it either via Amazon  for Kindle or through Smashwords for all others).

• Yah Gotta Read This! - June 17
• Raven Reviews - June 18
• Devoted Mommy of 3 - June 19
• Tana Rae Reads - June 20
• abookandalatte - June 21
• ai love books - June 22
• My Cozie Corner - June 23
• A Date With A Book - June 24
• The Reading Addict - June 25
• Perfect Chaos - June 26
• my name is: Sage- June 27
• Liz Loves Books - June 28
• Crafty Mom Zen - June 29

Next Novel

June 17th is fast approaching, and with it the release of my new novel, On the Edge.

As you will know if you've been reading this blog I've been posting about the upcoming "Blog Tour" that starts June 17th. I commissioned Sage Adderly to help me out with this, and so far I've been impressed. I wrote earlier about the upcoming Blog Tour that she is helping me run, and last year I wrote about my self-release and own experiences trying to get reviews in my AAR series. We shall see if Sage makes a significant difference come June 17.

So far Sage has been pretty decent. I've had two different rather lengthy questionnaires regarding my reading and writing life that I will post links to once they are released on June 17th. I've been impressed with the book banner she produced as well.

I think success in this arena will be gauged by whether or not I break even. Anything else will be nice, but at this point I'm hoping to take one small step toward my hobby becoming self-sustaining.

Yet Another Retraction?

So many retractions so little time.

Seriously though, this one is more of a clarification than a retraction. But just yesterday I write this post on how so many writing websites and editors have a paradigm that includes so many silly effects to draw the reader in. Then I run into this post today from The Kill Zone. I read the title, Checklist for Adding Suspense and Intrigue, by Jodie Renner and I immediately think it is going to support what I wrote yesterday. 

WRONG!

I wish I could post just the most prescient portions, but if I did I'd be lifting the entire post. It's a terrific checklist, at least the first half. The second half gets back into the typical techniques I alluded to yesterday, piling on the problems, but I suppose that comes with the thriller writing genre. 

Still, if you are a writer, this is a great checklist to help get you going. I recommend using it.

Move Move Move

So often when I read books on writing or try a critique group or hear a speaker the pacing of the story comes up. What I hear is that I should immediately plunge the reader into the action, I should put my hero in constant danger and the end of each chapter should be a cliff hanger of some sorts. It's somewhat refreshing to read Les Miserables if only because it doesn't follow that paradigm.

Would I have read yesterday of what was going on in the mind of Jean Valjean anything like this had it been written today:

In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature of his meditation? 

If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would, doubtless, think that same thing which Jean Valjean thought.

Or would I have read the first twenty something chapters at all which describe the daily life of Monseigneur Bienvenue?

Or would I have read an entire chapter about drowning at sea, the whole time thinking that Victor Hugo meant that Valjean was the victim, when by the end of the chapter he flips it around and lets the reader know that Valjean is like the sailors on the boat watching the drowning man recede in the distance. That the analogy has the entire ship as the prison and the drowning man is Valjean's hope and morality.

Granted, the mantra regarding putting the hero in danger et al is more suited for the Thrillers I've been reading lately, but more than that they are supposed to make the reader feel compelled to move on. Hugo does it with Les Miserables without the constant peril and without the cliff hangers and without the silly techniques.

Where's the Retraction Key on this Computer

Yeah, so, where's the key I push to print a retraction, cause after reading today's article on Apple by L. Gordon Crovitz that I found in the WSJ, I was way off!

The post I wrote last week where-in I alluded to Job's biography and his stipulation that "We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway," was off by a measure. What I didn't realize until I read today's article is that Apple wasn't setting the price, they were just setting the cut, or the percentage. I have polled a couple of other folks and they had the same misunderstanding.

How can you be mad at Apple when they are treating writing the exact same as every other product or good. All of their apps, all of their games, all of anything gets the same cut 30% to Apple. The article says that price isn't a factor. Until I read more, I'm gonna have to agree with Apple.

Apple just passed 50 billion downloads of the 850,000 apps for its iPhones and iPads. For paid apps, developers get 70% of the sales revenue and Apple keeps 30%. This applies to everything from the best-selling game Angry Birds to the GarageBand app that turns an iPad into a musical instrument.

Revenue sharing is a common business model, and it wasn't controversial until the Justice Department made this 30% the crux of its e-book price-fixing case against Apple, now entering its second week in federal court in New York.

There's nothing unlawful about revenue sharing or most-favored-nation pricing. 

I find that pretty dang compelling, but there's more. When I read this I became a convert:

As this column reported when the case was brought last year, Apple executive Eddy Cue in 2011 turned down my effort to negotiate different terms for apps by news publishers by telling me: "I don't think you understand. We can't treat newspapers or magazines any differently than we treat FarmVille." His point was clear: The 30% revenue-share model is how Apple does business with everyone. It is not, as the government alleges, a scheme Apple concocted to fix prices with book publishers.

I can't find fault with Apple if they're being consistent, can you? Find me where this is wrong and you'll see the first retraction of a retraction on this site.

First Line Today

There is an article today in the WSJ about when people stop reading novels that I hoped to discuss today, but will probably wait until tomorrow. But it goes hand in hand with today's post. I started reading Les Miserables and these are the first few sentences.

In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of Digne since 1806. 

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

Hugo, Victor - Les Miserables

First, it's hard not to be blown away by the line:

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

This is great and moving stuff. But secondly, the book's first passage seems like it would be incredibly boring. It has so little to do (seemingly) with the rest of the book. It moves so slowly, the wheels grind as fast as a snail. Still, I can't stop reading it. I'm soaking it all in. I can't wait to juxtapose it against tomorrow's article on when readers stop reading.

Took My Time With This One

I just finished The Ghost War by Alex Berenson. For the most part it was a pretty good book.

There were some instances where I thought it amaturish. Saying things like, "Then Well's told them of his plan," or "Was it any wonder Duto was so tired," idioms and "tricks" that took me out of the story and made me realize this was Berenson's second novel.

Still, it was good enough that I am looking forward to the next one. The ending seemed abrupt, almost too tidy, but sometimes that is necessary. In this case it seemed like I had read his outline for the book and it all tied together too conveniently. The last line was decent so I've pasted it below:

THEN, FROM ABOVE, THE GRINDING SOUND of metal on metal. Followed almost instantly by an enormous explosion, two hundred yards ahead, and a second even closer. Wells bowed his head as sizzling bits of metal crashed around him. 

They’d collided. The wind shift had left the helicopters blind. In their eagerness to get the kill, they’d come too close. They had crashed into each other in the dark and gone down, both of them. This filthy cloud had saved his life. Wells lifted the engine out of the water and looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark, thick air. Distant helicopters behind him. Somewhere overhead, a jet. 

And ahead, a voice. Amplified. American. 

Calling his name. 

He closed his eyes and lowered the engine into the water and steered for it.

Berenson, Alex - The Ghost War

Today's Writing Links

There is just so much to write about, today I'm writing a compendium of links to help keep it all sorted.

First, there is a terrific article from The Kill Zone by Claire Langley-Hawley regarding how to successfully integrate back story into a novel. This is a pet peeve of mine, right up there with poor foreshadowing, so I loved this article. Had it not been for the other links below, this would have been today's post all by itself. Well worth the five minutes it takes to read it.

The second link is this story about Apple appearing before the Justice Department today to discuss price fixing for ebooks. How can you have an ebook and epublishing series and not include this? Personally? My thoughts? Despite Cook's demurral, I believe what Job's said in hisbiography,

"We'll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30%, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that's what you want anyway," Mr. Jobs said in the book."

Then there was this article in the weekend WSJ about how to create a spy. This article resonated with me due to the fact that I'm reading The Ghost War right now by Alex Berenson and it's all about moles, spies and the CIA. Based on the article I'm looking forward to reading Jason Matthew's novel Red Sparrow.

Finally, there is this article from Thriller Ink that goes hand in hand with what I wrote last week when discussing Stephen King, established authors fearful of epublishing. I like Thriller Ink's take on this, mostly cause it echoes my own. Again, worth the five minute investment.