Today's Last Line

I just finished the Last Assassin by Barry Eisler. It was good, but I hesitate to say that it was as good as the other novels in the John Rain series. A review will be coming, but in the mean time here is the last line(s):

But why think about all that now, on my way to see Delilah? Barcelona had been an interlude before. It could be one again. 

No, that wasn’t quite right, I realized. Barcelona hadn’t been an interlude. It had been… anarmistice. 

But that was all right, too. An armistice wasn’t so bad. 

It was better than being at war. And if I could find a way to another armistice, and then another, maybe I could string them all together, and one day they’d actually add up to peace. 

One day.

Eisler, Barry - The Last Assassin

Who Knew It Did So Well

I read with a great degree of surprise in a WSJ article entitled Oh, My! That Dirty Book Has Sold 70 Million Copies by Jeffery A Trachtenberg that Fifty Shades of Grey was the fastest selling trilogy ever. That's pretty impressive. I can think of many books and series that should be up there as well, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, among others, but wouldn't have necessarily guessed that Fifty Shades of Grey beat them all out. According to the article, the numbers are pretty stellar.

E.L. James's "Fifty Shades" erotic trilogy sold more than 70 million copies in print, audio and e-book editions in English, German and Spanish from March through December, according to Bertelsmann SE & Co., parent of the books' publisher Random House. 

Then this:

For a sense of scale, Random House's second biggest selling North American title last year—Gillian Flynn's thriller "Gone Girl," which has been a national best-seller for 41 weeks—sold more than two million copies in the U.S. and Canada in all formats, between June and December.

Not a direct comparison mind you, English, German and Spanish and March through December compared to U.S. and Canada and June and December, but still that's a stunning spread! What's more stunning is not the fact that I bought it and started it, but that I had to put it down after just a few paragraphs. Mayhaps I need to try.

Evershade, evershades, ever shade, ever shades

Taking a Note From Murder Lab

Based on my post yesterday, and Kristine's bullet points about teasers, . . . and as I feel I am about 60 day's shy of releasing novel number two, On the Edge, here is a teaser for the reader.

Those who have read this blog for some time might remember this banner ad from last year when I was promoting Toe the Line.

60 days hence I hope to upload this one as a banner ad to this site.

There is a bit of a theme at play here. There's one in the writing too. We'll see if this campaign is more successful than the last toe dip in the waters.

**Nota Bene, I've had to shrink the size of the ads a tad. The text will be more legible when they are placed at the top of this page. - Thanks for the concern.

Planning

There are a lot of little nuggets here at Murder Lab a blog I found through Book Blogs. Kristen Elise has written a pretty well rounded bullet list of things an aspiring author can do prior to and after release of their works. Some of the suggestions I like and plan to do:

• Read and comment on other people's blogs
• Write guest posts for other bloggers
• Participate in blog hops and giveaways
• Retweet!
• Join a book club 
• Join a critique group
• Attend conventions

There's more and I recommend that any aspiring author reading this should hit the link to Murder Lab and see it for themselves. It gave me a moment's pause and reflection. 

Yep . . . Hated It

Trite, unimaginative, predictable . . . those are the words I would use to describe Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. So sad too. The first in the series, the Hunger Games, was fun, inventive and well worth reading (see here). This one, continued the downhill slide of the series since that first one.

I don't know if I can put my finger on one specific thing, I just didn't like it. I thought it was completely and utterly predictable and that by itself seems to have been enough to kill my enthusiasm for the series. The second in the series, Catching Fire (see here), wasn't as good as the first but still offered some potential for Miss Collins to "pull it out," sadly, she failed.

Nuff said I say.

Newest First Line

I'm back to reading a Barry Eisler novel. I have loved these in the past (see here) and based on the fact that not even a quarter of the way in I've already run across the word "vertiginous" I'm willing to bet I like this one too.

That being said, this is the first line:


I’VE NEVER LIKED doing a job in a new place. You don’t know how to get in and out undetected, you don’t know what tools you’ll need to access the target, you don’t know where you’ll stick out and where you’ll be able to fade into the background or disappear in a crowd. 

Eisler, Barry - The Last Assassin (Onyx Novel)

Not a great or thrilling first line, but if you know that you're reading about an assassin it does make one think about some of that person's needs, characteristics and desires.

One Might Think

An avid reader of both this blog and the WSJ might think that I would choose to discuss and link to the articles that appeared this weekend in the Review Section, specifically this article on life after death for dictator's corpses (here), or this article about the quick and sudden, and lonely success of The Lost Weekend (here) or this one (which I've only just run across) about novels set in Napa (here) or this article that discusses the screenplay being a terrific tool for teach "show don't tell" writing (here).

With all of these wonderful articles about fascinating subjects or about writing, a savvy reader would not think I'd take on yacht building, but I have.

A Hole in the Water You Fill With Money by Patrick Cooke is really quite interesting. The article itself is intriguing and depressing all at the same time and makes the book that it is written about, Grand Ambition by G. Bruce Knect, seem like it would be more of that. Is it off-kilter that I genuinely want to read this when Mr. Cooke writes:

From the living room of his $18.5 million duplex in New York's Time Warner Center, Mr. Von Allmen and his wife alternately cajole and torment Lady Linda's patient yacht designer, Evan Marshall, with questions that may strike the reader as strictly the problems of the idle rich. Should the yacht have built into it one garage or two for storing smaller craft? (Securing speedboats and wave runners on deck is viewed by the yachting community as déclassé and a sign that the owner can't afford a garage.) How will guests in the sky lounge be able to view underwater scenes sent from video cameras mounted beneath the yacht's hull? And what is the best way to air-condition the outdoor decks during those sweltering Mediterranean cruises?

or

Mr. Knecht, without being in any way judgmental, catalogs the jaw-dropping excesses. One owner has a room onboard that makes snow. Another built a concert hall large enough to fit a 50-member orchestra. Yet another has an onboard runway where models show off the newest fashions in a room with only two seats. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's 414-foot Octopus boasts a basketball court and a commercial-quality recording studio. No one, however, goes over the top like the Russians, the "oligarch-yachtsmen," as the author calls them. Roman Abramovich, the owner of Britain's Chelsea football club, also owns the Eclipse. At 533 feet, she is nearly as long as two football fields. Stored below decks is a submarine protected by a missile-defense system.

It was the last passage that really grabbed me, when the new yacht owner tours his purchase. This just smacks of being a character in a novel.

There is a scene toward the end of "Grand Ambition" where the author accompanies Mr. Von Allmen on a tour of Lady Linda. The owner is in a rotten mood. As he glumly surveys each luxurious deck, "there was not a flicker of excitement." He looks instead like a man staring down into a hole in the water that just swallowed a fortune.

As I'm all thriller this year, I'm guessing that this will be my next Audible.com book, but I bet I will find it fun and entertaining anyway.

Last Line of the Series

I just finished Mockingjay, and yet by have finished the last book in the Hunger Games series, and like the first line, the book as a whole was unimpressive.  I will a more full review in a future post, but for now there is this:

In addition, the last line of the epilogue says "But there are much worse games to play". What exactly does that mean?

It's better than the first line, infact the second half is better than the first, sadly I can't say the about the series. 

20% Aint Bad

I don't know many published local authors. I know several "wanna be" published local authors, but none with books out in print that are being schlepped. The Houston Chronicle shared a list of ten in Monday's edition.

Of the ten books, based solely on the summaries, I feel compelled to read only two. These snippets come from the Chronicle's  Bookish blog with Maggie Galehouse.

“Cold Blue Steel,” by Sarah Cortez. From a Houston writer with a diverse resume — active-duty police officer, corporate accountant, Latin teacher, and more — comes 50 lyric poems set in the world of the urban street cop. “The Secret” begins: “Love whatever can save/ your life. Your ballistic vest,/ your razored reflexes. The/ keys you rubber-banded/ to keep from jingling. The/ double-tied shoelaces that/ won’t come loose in a foot chase./ The short haircut a turd/ can’t grab in a scuffle/ to ream your face into concrete.” 

“Tumbledown,” by Robert Boswell. Boswell shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at UH with his wife, Antonya Nelson. This new novel is a sad but funny book about a therapist and his patients, sanity and insanity, and the choices we make to accommodate the failures of the rational world. 

I'm a tad surprised that I want to read a book of poems, but those seem interesting to me . . . go figure.

Sadly, as I'm in a Year Long Thriller Fest for reading, I won't be able to read either, at least not till next year.

Been a Long Time Since I Rocked a Revision

Let me start by saying that I really liked Rock Your Revisions by Cathy Yardley. I haven't read a book on the craft of writing in a while, and I'm sorry I haven't. That being said, this one is a good one.

So many books on writing can be dry and stuffy, and especially long. Strangely, somewhat ironically, they can be filled with poor writing. Rock Your Revisions was not one of these. It was focused and broke down Miss Yardley's analytical and step by step method of revising (what I consider to be the hardest part of writing). It was also extremely well written. Concise, to the point, prompt, and readable.

I liked the way she gave advice on revisions, this in-particular:


That said, you’re going to be creating some new scenes, and if you think that you not only have to change the whole dramatic action and come up with something polished, paralysis can set in. 

Personally, I’d approach this as story only.  Don’t let yourself get caught up in the polish.  That’s coming next.  Write new scenes, tinker with existing that need tweaking, and cut those that need it. 

Then, you’re going to look at each scene, examining the prose:  looking at how a reader will experience the story you’ve so carefully laid out.  Which is the next stage in the revision plan.

I'm doing this now with my third novel (tentatively titled Vapor Trail) and so far so good . . . or should I say, so far so better.


Personally I've always had trouble with setting or with setting the scene. Miss Yardley's advice:


Take the scene, and write it as if you’re writing a play. 

You can describe your character.  You can describe the setting.  You can write the dialogue and give stage directions. 

But you cannot write one word about how the character is feeling, what his/her back-story is, or what he/she is thinking about.

I look forward to Miss Yardley's other books. Next up . . . Rock Your Plot.