July Update/Details on Second Book

First and foremost, Coercion is slowly reaching the mass market. Smashwords, after more than two weeks, finally gave it premium status and just this week the book is now starting to enter the market. It will be available for Apple products and apps next week sometime and for Nook users not long after. Not sure about the Kindle or Sony. For the next book I might publish it separately on Amazon for logistical reasons.

As for the rest, well, the current book is going well enough, but is definitely slower. Coercion took a total of 65 days to reach the end. The current book is well past the book and will be at three months on July 21. The main reason for this, I suppose, is because it has a much larger cast than Coercion and it's a little harder to maintain all that information sometimes, leading to continuity errors, re-writes, and do-overs. I'm working on editing the second chunk of the book right now, but I'm already considering doing some major changes to the general structure of the story. Hopefully for the better.

The book, I hope, is going to be done by September 1 and maybe published by mid-October. I'd say it with more certainty but I've never been good at predicting these things in the first place. When I saw two weeks it usually means one. Maybe I'll be done by August 15 and I can have more time to work in the particulars. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

The current title for my second book is Avarice and it is a continuation of sorts of my little Oak Villa universe. It is not a sequel (for obvious reasons if you bothered to read Coercion), but several characters who appeared in Coercion turn up again in Avarice, but mainly in peripheral roles.

The general story of Avarice involves an Irish mobster just out of prison looking to get back into the game and finds his whole world has been turned inside out. His "family" has been decimated by arrests and the new street boss is impotent. A friend he made in prison, a former gang-banger and thief, is also struggling. There's also a young kid informing on the Irish mob who has a shit-ton of problems himself and there's a cop in the Gang Unit who wants to work major cases and is unhappy with his political, venal boss.

More intricately layered, but it has been satisfying. I'm trying hard not to repeat myself in Avarice, but that's not always easy. Most books by authors tend to follow the same themes. The trick is to make it seem different or go from another angle.

I also intend to work on the blog more and try to be more consistent. I say that all the time, but I really want to now, if for no other reason than to keep my name out there. So expect blogs once or twice a week from here on out (hope I don't break it like every other New Year's resolution I've tried).

Authors That Don't Actually Write

You've seen it, I'm sure. You see a famous author on the bookshelf and you think that maybe they just released their latest novel only to have your bubble burst when you see the author's name have a hyphen or the words "with so and so." I saw it earlier this week with the new Tom Clancy and I felt my blood boil to a fever pitch, knowing that the man had just given up on writing altogether.

And to think I once had admiration for the asshole. Granted, I was 14 then and didn't know any better. Hell, I was reading, right? As I got older, my tastes changed and I became more and more appreciative of writing as an art and less as a commodity (though both are important for separate reasons). I still maintain The Hunt for Red October is a good book and a solid American spy thriller (a cosmic rarity in of itself). His later books, however, became less about story and more about the latest technology or Clancy getting on his political soapbox and the books, as a result, took a nosedive. From The Bear and the Dragon on, the books went into total freefall. After 2003, there was a lot of speculation about what his next book would be. We got our answer in 2010 with Dead or Alive. We also learned he 'co-authored' the book with Grant Blackwood. That was all I needed to see. He didn't write the book. At best, maybe he polished the first draft and worked on the outline.

I knew he'd been doing this kind of thing with different series like Op-Center and Net Force, but doing it to your flagship series... this is where any last drops of respect I'd had for the man disappeared.

James Patterson is arguably the most famous culprit, "writing" series all over the place. I never had much use for the man to begin with, but it is depressing that he is duping readers with third-rate garbage written by people trying to emulate him.

And then we have our celebrities trying to write. Those fuckers couldn't put two intelligent sentences together if I put a loaded automatic to their head. Steve Martin and a few others aside, the others don't do the work themselves. Tori Spelling? Bristol Palin? Lauren Conrad? Yeah, right. They come up with whatever "idea" (usually thinly based on their own lives or their "memoirs") and they get someone else to write them.

Politicos are no different. Hell, it's been widely accepted that Jack Kennedy didn't write the Pulitizer winner Profiles in Courage. What makes you think that stupid hick Sarah Palin wrote her books?

I take great comfort in Elmore Leonard, who's 85 and probably slipping a little, but the man still writes his books by hand, one word at a time. If you have any regard for yourself, you'll take this advice to heart:

Write your fucking book yourself.

Coercion Officially for Sale

Well, it took a long time and a lot of delay, but I'm very pleased to announce that Coercion is finally up for sale for the low, low price of $2.99 USD. Figure this'll be enough to keep everyone happy. It is currently only on sale at Smashwords because it needs to be vetted by the Smashwords people so it can be published everywhere else. Once that happens I'll need to do a little more work so it can be accepted for the Apple people and what-have-you. All of that should be happening in the next week or so. For right now, though, you can buy it on Smashwords here.

Here is the official artwork:

A little noirish and gritty, which is what I was hoping for.

This is very exciting and hopefully I can reach my initial goal of selling 100 copies.

What I Do Apart From Writing

Gasp... you mean writers do stuff beyond read, write, and stare at that monitor all day hoping to put together two cogent sentences?

Surprisingly, yes.

This will be brief, but I do have other interests and passions apart from the world of writing, though none of them even come close to my passion for the game.

I do enjoy watching sports. Baseball and basketball, in particular. I am a lifelong White Sox and Bulls fan and was around to see Jordan's six titles and the White Sox win in 2005. I hate the Cubs (sorry, Cubby fans), mainly out of some inferiority complex and because of the storied rivalry that especially heats up when the two teams play six games a year. I like the Bears, even though the ownership drives me nuts. The Hawks have become fun again since the old man died and their Stanley Cup title last year was a real treat. I like Northwestern in college sports for reasons that continue to confound me. Wonder how many more disappointments I have to swallow before I give up. The rest of the sports are hit-or-miss. I'll watch the four golf majors and the Ryder Cup, the Kentucky Derby, and if there's a good boxing or UFC match I'll watch that, too.

I also enjoy playing sports. Basketball and golf are my favorite to play. Baseball and football is more for recreational fun more than anything else. I wish I could play pool and I have no particular skill for bags, but then not many people do, I've noticed.

I'm an avid video game player and have enjoyed playing them for the last twenty years. Many of my favorites are Nintendo classics like Tetris, Mario 3, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time. Modern games I've really enjoyed are the Metal Gear Solid series, Half-Life 2 (ditto Portal 2), Grand Theft Auto (from GTAIII onwards), and the Modern Warfare games. I admit the storytelling isn't quite on par with what we've seen thus far in books and movies, but they're getting better, and I do enjoy it when someone tries to swing for the fences.

I like movies, but all the crap spilling into theaters makes me yearn for better times. I like movies that have good, fundamentally sound stories that will challenge me. Sadly, not too many these days since the average intelligence of the moviegoer is about on par with a retarded monkey.

I enjoy a good cup of coffee and I like writing in coffee houses (cliched, I know), but, hey, if it gets the job done I couldn't care less. Better than sitting on your ass and waiting for inspiration, which has become the trend for so many "aspiring" writers that I know.

Well, hopefully this gives you a slightly fuller picture.

As for my book, Coercion, I hope my new artist will have the drawings ready for me this week so I can publish by June 15 on Amazon and B&N. I hope, but we shall see.

Writing Habits...

Reading and writing a lot are the keys to becoming a successful writer. You have to do both in order to succeed. No if's, and's, or but's about it. If you don't have the desire to do both, then you don't belong in the game. My reading habits are scattershot, but I go through about 40-50 novels a year, mostly in the crime/mystery genre. Some literary fiction slips through with the occasional spy novel, but my books tend to congregate in the world made famous by Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and the other "boys in the back room."

As for writing, well... this does tend to vary from writer to writer. My own habits have gone through a few changes over the years. I used to be much faster, knocking out three to four thousand words a day. Problem was the work wasn't very good and full of mistakes. So I started changing my habits a few years ago and now I tend to write 1,000 to 1,500 words a day. Sometimes I'll catch fire and nudge my way to 3,000, but those are few and far between.

I do all of my daily writing in one sitting and at the very least I try to complete a scene or two. I focus all of my energy like a guided missile on that scene or scenes and everything else after is a mystery. Before I start writing the new work, though, I go back and rework the material I wrote the day before. Most of the editing is minor house-cleaning. Getting rid of extra words and dialogue that don't fit with the story. Some extra work is sometimes needed and maybe other scenes or bits related to character motivation will also need to be excised, but that doesn't happen often.

I type really fast so my work tends to be done in an hour or two. Some might think this is lazy, but mentally I am spent after writing those couple of scenes. I throw everything I have in the tank and then some. I suppose I could learn some endurance, but when you work other jobs you have to take the time that you're given and make the most of it. If I were a full-time writer, sure, I might stretch it out a little, but I think I would go crazy if I spent six or seven hours writing. There comes a point when you just need to shut the brain off and work on something else. Let the brain recharge and come back to the work later or the next day with a renewed perspective and a fresh eye. You'd be amazed at how well this works.

Any revisions I make after I've completed the book tend to be minor and, again, related to character motivation, character relationships, and any other phrases that tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Since I've been revising and fact-checking my own work along the way, the revisions as a whole tend to be minor. Is it a perfect system? I doubt it, but no one has ever gotten it exactly right. That's not an excuse for a laziness, but a simple reality. I'll throw everything I have to get it right, knowing I won't be 100% accurate in my goals and desires.

All the more reason to try again and do better the next time, using the lessons I've learned from the last story and the stories that preceded it to try again.

It's always about the next one.

Writers That Influence Me

Yes, we've come to that post. Which writers have helped mold me into the writer that I am today? I'll try and keep this as short and sweet as possible. No point in turning this into some Academy Awards speech that becomes gratuitous and overwrought. I'll keep it limited to the author and the work that continues to inspire me.

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. This is the book that got me going, in a sense. Many of the authors I would discover and come to admire came from this book. I got the book as a present from my 8th grade English teacher. She knew I wanted to be a writer. The book has been a tremendous asset. While I admire several of the books King has written before and since this book, On Writing has a special place in my heart. I learned the basics of writing, the importance of craft, found other great writers through this book, and continue to learn new things through the book.

Elmore Leonard, Rum Punch. The master of dialogue, bar none. Leonard's masterful, minimalist style that puts an emphasis on dialogue continues to drive me through my own work. Rum Punch (which became the Tarantino movie Jackie Brown) is not his best novel (that's Freaky Deaky with LaBrava and Swag close behind). In terms of how easy and effortless he make his prose seem and feel and how well the elements work together, there is none better and I learned the most about writing through this book. And oh yeah, the story's pretty good, too.

George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Leonard's inspiration and the modern template for the crime novel, which is almost all dialogue, is a delight to read just because of how well the characters interact with each other. The book would have been perfect if there was almost no description because that is Higgins's weak point. For character interaction and how well different voices interact, it doesn't get much better than this.

The Wire, David Simon and Ed Burns. Yeah, okay, it's not a book, but it sure is structured like one. Hell, they got three modern crime novelists (Richard Price, George Pelecanos, and Dennis Lehane) to write for the show. The Wire is about as realistic and gritty as you can get. The dialogue, through its realism, is unmatched, and the eye for detail in Baltimore and the characters that inhabit the world that Simon and Burns created is nothing short of remarkable. A must-watch for any aspiring writer, regardless of genre.

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian. A bit of a departure here. Blood Meridian might be the greatest book I ever read. It ain't easy to get through, though, because of the unflinching brutality McCarthy shows. His eye and ear for dialogue and description and his ability to show the world as it is with an unflinching eye is remarkable. The prose is close to shattering, which is probably why I've only read it all the way through twice. I've tried on a number of other occasions, but the powerful language has that knack to throw me back on my heels. If I could write something even half that amazing, I could die happy. Meridian is the bench-mark I have set for myself. I suppose all writers have one.

Well, that's enough for now. There are undoubtedly others, but these five are what I take with me in my mind when I sit down to do my daily work. Speaking of which, I should be doing more of that right now.

New Book Update/Coercion...

Been a while, but I've had a few changes with the current book/Coercion.

To begin with, Coercion is going to be released. I just don't know when. I've got an artist close to me who needs to finish school first. I'm not happy about it, but I'm willing to wait because I know the quality will be good and the price I'm paying for the work is comparable to what I would pay otherwise. School ends in a couple weeks so I'm hoping--hoping--that everything will be ready by June 1. No guarantees, but that seems like a viable timetable, given everything going on. The extra time might be a good thing in the long run just because it allows me more time to fine-tune a couple of things. Will I get everything right in the final analysis? I doubt it, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

The basic idea for the book, which was posted on my Twitter feed, goes like this: A corrupt homicide detective and a low-rent Russian mobster using everyone--and each other--to get their hands on a major score to escape the situations they're in. It runs a little more complicated, but that's the basic crux of the whole idea.

As for my next book, which remains untitled, it has gone through a bit of a torturous journey. The book is a crime novel and is set in the same Oak Villa universe. The first attempt got to about 150 pages and it wasn't bad writing, I don't think, but it was too stretched out. Too many characters and not enough story. I liked the basic idea, but it needed to be simplified for the sake of my story and the good characters trying to make their voices heard. So I started over with a simplified concept and on some level it is similar to my first book, Coercion, but it has undertones of the great George V. Higgins novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, where cops and criminals are just trying to scrape by and make a living since that's generally true for people in the world, legit or not. The basic elements involve Irish mobsters looking to make money in a gun trade with a gang that has a major drug connect, even though drugs are taboo with the Irish, especially since a number of gangsters have been busted for RICO, and then there's an organized crime cop, under pressure from his political boss to make arrests and not cases, who has an informant who stumbles onto the connect and he sees a chance to appease his boss and maybe get him promoted so he doesn't work in organized crime anymore.

That's the basic crux and I've got, maybe, a third or so of it done. It should be about the same length, I'm guessing, as Coercion, which is about 330 pages. I don't like to predict that kind of thing because I tend to be wrong, but that's a decent guess.

Until next time...