Been Awhile

It's been awhile since I re-posted something from The Kill Zone, but it's not because they haven't posted some really great stuff on their site.

First, let me say how thankful I am that I ran across and started following The Kill Zone. It is one of those rare blogs that I could go and read every day and not get bored. Mostly that's because they rotate authors on a twice weekly basis. It's always fresh and new. Secondly it's because it speaks to me as a thriller writer. If you are a thriller writer and don't read The Kill Zone, . . . What's wrong with you!

Everything they write is interesting and relevant, unlike this blog (?) I know that there are many people who come to this site and think, "Another post on Apple? Come on. Talk about writing!" Then there are those that come and think, "More on your failed novel writing? Get back to articles on publishing!" Of course their are the majority of you who think, "Why do I keep coming to this blog?" The Kill Zone will not allow you to think that last thought.

Nevertheless, this latest post speaks to me if only because it deals with a facet of writing that I find incredibly intriguing. Why was Dan Brown's Davinci Code such a blockbuster when it broke so many well established rules. What about Fifty Shades of Grey? Why was it so popular? How do I go about writing a book that is just as ground/rule breaking?

Clare Langley-Hawthorne addresses all this in a bulleted list. As a Technical Writer I'm partial to bulleted lists. But this one is also good due to the comments. So often I forget to read the comments and that is where so many real gems can be found.

If you want to know more about "the Wow Factor" then read this linked post. If you want to constantly be intrigued, read The Kill Zone daily.

Getting Down to Serious (or) Business

I am in training all week, so my ability to quickly and concisely analyze and react to articles like this one in the WSJ that revolves around the publishing world will be seriously curtailed and limited or this one that a reader sent in.

That being said I do have a lot of time to think about the plotting (or is it plodding) of my novel. This is good for my critique group because hopefully it will enhance the work and make it more worthwhile.

I'm really looking forward to my critique group meeting, but I just noticed something. I accepted the meeting date readily and excitedly, happy that I was in town that day. That's what I focused on, the day. It wasn't till yesterday that I noticed the time.

Eleven in the morning? Who sets up a critique group meeting for eleven in the morning?

That's when it hit me. Want to know who sets up critique group meetings for eleven in the morning . . . people who are serious about their writing, that's who. I have a full time job, I work at eleven in the morning. My fellow critique-ers do not have full time, nine to five jobs. They are more serious, obviously, about their writing than I. I wish I could take my writing as seriously.

When does one start to take it more seriously? When one becomes successful? Seems like a catch 22. How does one become a successful writer, by taking it more seriously. How does one take it more seriously, by becoming successful.

Is it a good thing to be immediately jealous of one's writing critique group even before anything has been read or critiqued? We shall see next week at eleven in the morning.

Win Some, Lose Some

I think I must be reading the Onion because this smells of hoax, but if it's not it's either hilarious or jack-assery. The article, Samsung-pays-apple-1-billion-sending-30-trucks-full-of-5-cents-coins that I found via Newshound states:

This morning more than 30 trucks filled with 5-cent coins arrived at Apple’s headquarters in California. Initially, the security company that protects the facility said the trucks were in the wrong place, but minutes later, Tim Cook (Apple CEO) received a call from Samsung CEO explaining that they will pay $1 billion dollars for the fine recently ruled against the South Korean company in this way.

It's devious sure, but I wonder how much it cost Samsung to do it this way. My next question would be . . . why call them "five cent coins" instead of nickels. My final question . . . why not send pennies?

Avid Reader Responds

An avid reader, my indispensable brother, of this blog wrote to me yesterday regarding the subject of this article U.S. Judge Rules Apple Colluded on E-Books that was in the WSJ the other day.

A key passage in the article by Chad Bray, Joe Palazzolo, and Ian Sherr:

Justice Department prosecutors argued that Apple used publishers' dissatisfaction with Amazon's aggressive e-book discounting to shoehorn itself into the digital-book market when it launched the iPad in 2010. Apple's proposal: Let publishers set prices themselves. That led to Amazon losing the ability to price most e-book best sellers at $9.99, causing prices to rise.

My brother responded to this as such:

Great day for amazon, and a shitty day for authors around the world.  Somehow Amazon convinced our government to sue their competitor for trying make prices of ebooks viable.

I don't know if it's a product of living so closely to a (now) raging libertarian, but I have to agree and have written so in the past, particularly in this post from a few weeks past, the one in which it seems obvious that Apple wasn't setting prices, but merely setting the percentage they took off of books at the same weight as all other apps.

Nevertheless, I think my brother has headed the nail with a solid hit.

The Writing Group, Take 2

Those who follow the blog will note that I haven't enjoyed writing groups (see here or details), but I'm at it again.

A friend of mine from National Novel Writing Month and a woman I know from BookBlogs both formed the group with a third and then subsequent asked me to join. It's the first time my "fame" as a writer has lead to a perk. I'll take it!

So far it's been a raging and rousing success. We have a deadline tomorrow. All writers in the group have till tomorrow to upload their sample then we all have till July 22 to read each other's works and edit/critique them. Can you see why I'm so excited? One of the aspects I hated about my former writing groups was that we edited on the spot. Who wants such quick and one dimensional critiques? Secondly, all of us are in similar genres, not exactly the same mind you, but similar. I don't think there are any children's book writers or YA writers and the fantasy is not far fetched. Finally, we all come from recommendations of others, meaning that we've been vetted to some degree. This is the biggest plus. I've read a sample of Lindsay's work and I've read all of Kristi's last novel (here).

If I'm writing pissed on July 23rd you will know why, but on July 9th I'm stoked.

The End of the Experiment (aka AAR 2)

Just like my original AAR, I'm a-doing one for On the Edge now.

I know that there was a variable "control group" since I had two different novels that I was promoting, but despite Sage's best efforts, I just don't see any great increase in sales due to the blog tour. Once again my family has come in strong ordering the bulk of the copies that have been digested by the market, and I'm wondering how many of my On the Edge novels will become "home-fill" for my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Richard's ski chalet, but I'll take home-fill over land-fill or no-fill.

That being said I'm going to try a couple more things.

First, I'm going to try a mass market promoter. This, I'm sure will provide a sterile experience that has been promised to be tailored to my specific genre. We shall see.

Secondly, I'm going to hit up the folks who reviewed my last novel, Toe the Line. Let's see if they like the second novel as much as the first.

Finally, one thing I've found, which is somewhat inspirational, for Toe the Line I got about five rave reviews and two "so-so's" and one straight up "this sucka is bad." Not so with On the Edge. By my tally, I've got about four "this is good's" and maybe two or three "I liked it alot and intend to buy more." That means growth in my book.

A Bit More Self Promotion

So over the past week, two more blogs have reviewed my novel On the Edge. Again, I'm not yet seeing any resulting downloads or purchases of my book, but the reviews are nice to read.

This first is from My Name is Sage, a blog run by the publicist, Sage Adderly, who I hired to run my blog tour for this book.

On The Edge is the second novel I've read by Dick Hannah and the growth in his writing is evident. While the plot of this story revolves around the military and disciplined fitness, two things that normally wouldn't hold my attention, Hannah's writing captivated me until the last page. 

This is a solid mystery with a group of characters that aren't what they appear to be. Protagonist Joe Malone attempts to juggle life after the war, family drama, and deceit within his work community. Hannah kept my interest with multiple twists and turns, which is necessary when executing a suspenseful tale. I liked that Dick Hannah added a light romance to the story. It added to the action-packed book without being distracting from the overall plot.

This second review is by Liz Wilkins of the Blog Liz Loves Books.

I liked the way this story flowed – well written and intriguing enough in the early stages to keep you turning pages, and with a good dose of interesting characterization it was an easy but involving read. Joe himself is well imagined – the challenges he faces to restore his mental health after the horrors he faced in Iraq are cleverly written and add great depth to his character. As for the adventure racing angle, I found this exciting to read – I don’t know a lot about this area but I found myself enjoying finding out. The author has written what he knows – and it shows.

All in all I would say this was worth a read if you like adventure, mystery and a great story well told.

Naturally I can't help but agree with both of these reviews. Secondly, these are the two most indepth reviews I've yet gotten. Unlike one or two of the others, these read as though the bloggers took time in reading the books. Of all the blog stops that did reviews I've yet to get a negative review (which is good to have) but like I mentioned above, no changes in purchases based on the blog tour.

Give Me a Reason to Care

I'm in the middle of working out some of the finer points of my novel Vapor Trail. One of those "points" is trying to find a way to make the reader care about the main character. That might seem a bit simple, but it is of vital importance to the novel and here's why.

Over the past two days I've read several reviews of the new Lone Ranger film that stars Johnny Depp. I read a review in the local paper that mentioned that the audience has a hard time caring about why they two protagonists, Tonto and the Lone Ranger, are chasing the bad guy (I would link to it but the paper's website is atrocious and I can't locate the article). Then today I read this in the WSJ by Joe Morgenstern:

Nor is there any reason to care about the masked rider on the white stallion; he's mainly Tonto's foil, a handsome boob played blandly by Armie Hammer.

"Nor is there any reason to care," that's what I'm trying to avoid in Vapor Trail. I've been focusing on plot and on story, but not on character. It's tough all the time making sure that the reader cares about the character, cares so much that they want to read on.

Right now I'm reading Les Miserables. Victor Hugo makes the reader care so much about what will happen to Jean Valjean that he can write chapters and chapters about houses and people in the Parisian suburbs, and about Waterloo, and about all sorts of other things and I'll keep on reading since I want to know what will happen to the hero.

It's my goal for the next few months . . . to give the reader a reason to care about Vapor Trail.

A Savvy Reader Speaks Up

Hopefully commenting on my post yesterday, a savvy ready, my brother, spoke up with his own two cents that concentrates on his own milieu.

Geek.com has an article by Ryan Whitman that includes a video addressing why it was impossible to fake the moon landing in the 1960's. The video is fun to watch and well done. It takes complex technology and inside baseball, well in this case inside video, topics and breaks it down into simple, easy to digest bites that just about anyone can understand.

But eventhough the video is worth the thirteen minutes it takes to watch, it was the summary or conclusion that I really keyed in on. There were two snippets that hit directly on the theme that I'm trying to impart to my novel, Vapor Trail.

The first quote from the video is:

The urge to believe drives people to trade in part of their soul in exchange for the comfort of being a rebel.

This quote directly relates to the main character I'm trying to create. The "comfort of being a rebel" isn't quite there yet, but the exchanging of the soul, that's there and it's fun to develop.

The second quote is this one:

Once you're forced to hypothesize whole new technologies to keep your conspiracy possible, you've stepped over into the realm of magic. It demands a deep and abiding faith in things you can never know.

A couple of scenes I've already drafted include the main character and the protagonist meeting different types of people who are also conspiracy theorist. One is a nutty guy who believes the most blatantly ididotic theories out there. The other is a former college professor who is more down to earth. I could see the professor lecturing the protagonist with words just like the quote above.

Vapor Trail

I am currently working on my next novel, Vapor Trail, that delves into the harmful and debilitating results of believing too much in a conspiracy theories.

One of my favorite things to do every month is to listen to a talk radio show that sponsors a conspiracy call in day, appropriately on the night of each month's full moon. I love listening to folks call in and explain their particular conspiracy. In most cases the conspiracies don't hold water, most deal with cabal's of bankers running the world in some sort of shadow government. Most people who call in believe in what Popular Mechanics calls "The Myth of Government Hyper Competency." I've worked for the government. We barely made it up to competency, much less "hyper."

The conspiracy I delve into in Vapor Trail is the mystery behind the downing of TWA Flight 800 back in 1996. I know that Nelson Demille has a great book, Sky Fall, that hits on this same subject, but mine doesn't focus on the flight as much as it does on the deterioration of a character's life due to his believe in a conspiracy, a subject I started researching by reading Among the Truther's by Jonathon Kay.

Today I ran across this snippet in the WSJ in an article by Amanda Foreman called Conspiracy Theories: Everybody's Doing It:

It doesn't help that some of the most absurd-sounding conspiracies have turned out to be true: The Central Intelligence Agency really did feed LSD to unsuspecting civilians in the 1950s as part of a mind-control experiment. Or that some of the technically plausible ones have been patently false: The moon landings were not filmed on a sound stage.

It is human nature to look for a linear cause to explain complex events. The worse the tragedy, the greater the need for a narrative that does not involve dumb luck. Eight hundred years after the destruction of Constantinople by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are still unable to agree on who or what tipped the two Christian empires into a ruinous fight against one another.

One aspect of conspiracy theories that I hope to dig down into is the theory of Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I love the way conspiracy theorist will create an incredibly complex series of event and solutions to a problem that has many more simpler solutions. 9-11 provides 75% of the material during the call in show, and what I like about that is that my character in Vapor Trail visits other "experts" (conspiracy theorists) along his journey to the truth and most of them are focused on 9-11. None are looking at his conspiracy, the one that he finds has the simplest, most plausible explanation that everyone could see if they were just looking at it correctly.

Just as On the Edge was a step up in complexity compared to Toe the Line, Vapor Trail will be a step in the same direction. It's a tough theme to take on, but so far it's exciting to be in the midst of it.