My Guest: J.E. Ryder

I am aware that many aspiring writers read this blog looking for insights from those who have broken through the apparently insurmountable barriers to becoming a published author. Today's Guest provides sound advice as she recounts her own journey to seeing her superb suspense novel published by Amazon and available for readers everywhere. Ladies and gentlemen,

J.E. Ryder

Learning the Writing Craft 

- A Long Road Travelled

Since the self-publishing revolution we’ve seen an explosion in online resources for authors. Any question on the writing craft or publishing business can be answered in a mouse-click, the answers given freely by authors and writing professionals willing to share their knowledge.

Seven years ago we lived in a different landscape. There was writing advice out there, from Internet companies, individuals, how-to write books, magazines, writers’ conferences, creative writing groups and workshops, but all that closely guarded information came at a price.

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Fortunately, I didn’t think I’d need to spend my hard-earned money on writing advice. I’d had a good education. I had thrilling story ideas swilling around in my head, and I’d been reading books all my life. What could be simpler than dashing off a novel in my spare time?

One day I saw an advertisement for a monthly writing magazine. The banner title read: How to Land a Literary Agent. Useful, I thought; I’d need an agent when I finished my novel. The magazine arrived in the post with a free how-to-write paperback. Soon, unfamiliar terminology began to spin before my eyes: plotting, back story, POV, motivation, pace, theme, style, protagonist, antagonist, three-act-structure, character arcs, theme, turning points.

I wasn’t discouraged. After all, I was used to managing offices and organising staff. I’d edited in-house magazines and newsletters. Learning this skill known as the writing craft should be easy. That summer I booked a day at a writers’ conference. My inexperience led me to sign on for sessions that were far too advanced. Much of the teaching went way over my head. Other budding authors plodding between lectures looked as lost as I was. In the lunch break I met an author who’d just signed with a major literary agency. He said he’d been attending conferences for ten years to learn the craft. Ten years? I was stunned. The horrible realisation dawned. I was in for a long, hard slog.

I spent my free days attending creative writing groups, joined workshops, went to conferences, devoured how-to-write books. I wrestled with the dark art of synopsis writing, learned how to compose an industry standard query letter, got to grips with manuscript formatting. Two years later I had a completed novel. I started the depressing task of submitting to Agents, waiting weeks, months sometimes for rejection slips to land on the doormat (one took five months to arrive). Occasionally, a slip would carry a scribbled comment: “You can write well, but I can’t place this right now,” or, “This needs more work.” That one always bemused me. What work? How can I do more work if you don’t tell me what kind of work I should be doing? But, as an Agent said to her audience at conference: Agents are not in the business of teaching people how to write.

Over the next couple of years I had the good fortune to meet three generous people who moved my writing skills forward.

•        In a conference hallway, I approached an Agent whom I’d heard was taking submissions for thrillers. She didn’t seem to notice my nervousness (or maybe she was used to seeing authors shaking in fear). After listening to my stumbling elevator pitch, she accepted the first chapter, synopsis and query letter. Six weeks later she asked to read the entire manuscript. I went into shock. The entire manuscript! I sent it away and spent the next ten days in a nail-biting blur. She didn’t take it up, but she did write a long email explaining how to fix the novel. For the first time I had professional feedback.
•            At a workshop, a published author recommended a book that had helped him in his career: “Scene & Structure, How to construct fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability, by Jack M. Bickham.” The chapter on Cause and Effect was a revelation.
•             In early 2009, I discovered a blog written by American editor and author, Anne Mini, entitled “Author! Author!” In her own words: “Part of my purpose in setting up this website is to provide as much information about the writing life and publication process as possible to aspiring writers…” Her comprehensive online advice was free, unheard of at the time. She was the only writing professional I’d come across who was willing to discuss the craft. I wish I’d found her sooner. She started posting in August 2005. Reading her blog posts I finally understood why my manuscript needed more work. Under her instruction I spent months improving my novel-editing skills, the laborious process of refining words, grammar and story structure.

Five years had passed since I’d purchased that fateful writing magazine. I was ready to take early retirement. My freedom to write full time coincided with the growth in the Internet self-publishing revolution. I was determined to join the revolution the moment I had a novel ready. I discarded my early writing efforts and started afresh. The result is my thriller, Blood Pool, published in Kindle format on Amazon. Currently, I’m working hard on my next novel, a sweeping thriller spanning the European continent, a story of tragedy, vengeance and love.

I know now that my writing journey will never end. Every day I learn something new from our wonderful online community. Were the years spent struggling with the craft worth it? I’d have to say, yes. They taught me not only essential skills, but also how to keep going in the face of disappointment and rejection. They were worth it.

BIO:

At ten years old J.E. Ryder discovered that her elder brother's reading choices were completely different from hers, and much more exciting. She loved his fabulous Marvel Comics with their superheroes and heroines, the espionage novels, gritty adventure stories and survival epics. Her lifelong enjoyment of thrilling fiction has had a major influence on her writing. Her business career took her through all the big city industries and corporations: oil, banking, law and national government, and provided an endless cast of fascinating people and situations to draw on. Her debut thriller, Blood Pool is available from Amazon. Currently, she’s working on her next novel, a sweeping thriller that spans the European continent, a story of tragedy, vengeance and love.

Blood Pool Book Description:

How hard can it be to kill one woman?

When Sam Shelley’s husband dies she becomes the owner of his boat yard and estates. The Shelley men have inherited the land for two hundred years. Locals want it to stay that way. They’re threatening to trace the rightful male heir.

Then an old friend, an eccentric inventor, disappears in violent circumstances. Sam will do anything for him: he’s been like a father to her while she grieved. The race is on to find him. The authorities want him for murder. Government agencies want him and his world-changing invention for themselves.

Sam is determined to reach him first. Soon, she’s squeezed between murderous factions outside the boat yard and deadly rivalries within. No one is what they seem, especially those nearest to her…

J.E. Ryder’s Amazon Page: http://viewAuthor.at/JERyder

J.E. Ryder’s Blog: http://jeryder.blogspot.co.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J.E.RyderAuthor

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Jeryder5Author

Goodreads: http://goodreads.com/jeryder

Thank you J.E. for a wonderful inspirational post. Many aspiring writers out there, perhaps losing heart at the constant obstacles that seem to separate them from having their work published, should be encouraged by your words. As Sancho Panza of Don Quijote fame once said: "Patience, and shuffle the cards!"

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Michael W. Sherer

My Guest this week is a force to be reckoned with in the thriller and mystery novel genre. As this post goes live, his novel NIGHT BLIND is up for an award at the ITW (International Thriller Writers), to be announced at this year's ThrillerFest (July 10-13). On behalf of all the readers of this blog I'd like to wish him all our best for success there. Today he brings us all some very sound advice. Ladies and Gentlemen:



Michael W. Sherer

For God’s Sake, Get It Right!

NOTE TO MY READERS: If you would like to hear this Guest Post read by its author, it can be found HERE (Mike's segment starts at minute 26 more or less).

Some of the worst writing advice you can get is to write what you know. It’s a huge fallacy, a myth. If we all wrote what we know, the world would be filled with boring, poorly written autobiographies. We wouldn’t have fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, regency romances… the list goes on. Did Mary Shelley reanimate a patchwork corpse and dictate her notes on the experiment? Did Poe dismember a body and hide it under his floorboards just to see if his guilt would cause him to hear a beating heart? Did Jules Verne captain a submarine or pilot a balloon? Most of us write about circumstances we’ve never personally experienced.

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Another homily you shouldn’t believe: “Don’t sweat the small stuff; and it’s all small stuff.” Self-publishing has opened up a world of opportunity for authors. When my first novel was published 25 years ago, about 44,000 books were published annually in the U.S. The number last year had grown to nearly 14 times that many. And, according to Bowker, 235,000 of those were self-published. Writers who never would have seen their books in print five years ago now can sell thousands, even millions, of copies of their work. But, just as some of the books traditional publishers put out are crap, so are many self-published books, perhaps a much larger percentage.

E-books have made self-publishing a no- or low-cost affair, and the tools available online make the process as easy as a few clicks of the mouse on a computer. Those two factors alone have encouraged a huge number of authors to self-publish who would otherwise endure slush piles and stacks of rejections from agents and publishers. And, yes, it’s encouraged every wannabe author to put his or her efforts out there for the world to see. Many aren’t ready for primetime. Some will never be ready. A majority, however, are what traditional publishers call “midlist” authors whose work is certainly good enough for publication, but may never find a wide audience.

Sadly, the product many of these authors put out isn’t worth reading for one simple reason: lack of good editing. Maybe they’re too eager to get their work “out there,” and don’t take the time to make their books the best they can be. Maybe they can’t afford a good editor. Or perhaps they’re too lazy to proof their own work. In so doing, they violate their sacred trust with readers. 

As fiction authors, in particular crime fiction, we forge an unspoken, unwritten contract with readers. We promise to do our very best to entertain them, to give them characters who are lifelike despite prowess at one skill or another beyond our normal ken; to offer settings that may be both exotic and foreign, yet places we might find on a map; to carry us on a thrill ride with twists and turns, steep climbs and dramatic drops that leave our stomachs in our mouths but never jar us so hard we’re thrown off.

In short, we promise not to stretch credulity, not to give them a reason to suspend disbelief. Which means that we have to get it right. We must do our research and speak as if we’re experts on every topic even if we’re not. Because the unfortunate truth is that if we get details wrong, then we’ve quickly lost a reader’s trust. Once and they might forgive us. Twice in one book and they might reconsider finishing what we’ve written. More than that, and we’ve likely lost a buyer and potential fan of our next book.

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Some of us hated doing homework in school, and are loathe to fact-check absolutely every detail. And no one’s perfect, which is why so many authors, including me, often say on an acknowledgements page that they’ve done their best, but mistakes happen. We hate it when they do. There’s nothing worse than being called out by an irate reader on a detail that you overlooked, a detail you know you should have gotten right.

When I suggested earlier that you should ignore the advice to write about what you know and use your imagination to create worlds with which you’re unfamiliar, I didn’t mean you shouldn’t learn how those worlds work. Don’t know the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol (a mistake I still see often in crime fiction)? You’d better find out before you put a weapon in the hands of your character.

I recently read a book in which the author made, for me, four fatal errors that demonstrated a lack of research, lack of a good copy editor or both. The first was misspelling the name of a major defense contractor. The error easily could have been remedied by a quick look on the Internet. It wasn’t a horrible mistake, but it wasn’t a typo either, which suggested sloppy work.

The second error was the protagonist’s disappointment that DNA results hadn’t come back from the lab within 48 hours (the protagonist being a crime scene investigator). The CSI technicians I’ve spoken with all say they’re lucky to get results back in as little as two to three weeks. The mistake made me think that the author had relied on a perception propagated by television shows and not real research.

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The author committed a third error when a pathologist conducting an autopsy definitively declared that the victim’s killer had used a revolver with a silencer. Suppressors are rarely used on revolvers because they offer little benefit; the gap between the cylinder and barrel permits too much sound to escape. And though I haven’t yet asked an expert, I find it hard to believe the wound itself would reveal whether a silencer had been used or not.

Then, in the denouement, the struggle between protagonist and serial killer at the scene of a light plane crash, the author kept referring to the still-rotating rudder. At one point, the hero shoves the killer into the “rudder” while it was turning, causing it to bruise his shoulder but not incapacitate him. I think the author meant “propeller” not “rudder,” but by that point my credulity had been frayed to the breaking point.

The book wasn’t badly written, but mistakes like these scream “Amateur!” Worse, for me, they make me leery of reading authors I’ve not heard of, or authors whose books have not been vetted by a large numbers of readers. And I end up approaching the next few books I read with a jaundiced eye and more unforgiving of even the smallest of errors. To be fair, I find errors like these in traditionally published books by best-selling authors, which is an even more egregious crime.

Self-publishing is giving a tremendous number of authors a chance to find readers they wouldn’t otherwise. Don’t lose those readers right off the bat with errors and sloppy editing. Get it right! 

BIO:

After stints as manual laborer, dishwasher, bartender, restaurant manager, commercial photographer, magazine editor and public relations executive, Michael W. Sherer decided life should imitate art and became an author and freelance writer. Mike is the Thriller Award-nominated, best-selling author of Night Blind, the first in the Seattle-based Blake Sanders thriller series. His other books include six novels in the award-winning Emerson Ward mystery series, the stand-alone suspense novel Island Life, and the Tess Barrett YA thriller series.

Please visit him at http://www.michaelwsherer.com or you can find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thrillerauthor and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/MysteryNovelist.

Thanks for the great post, Mike. I confess that you have hit the nail on the head with one of my own pet-peeves. Researching stuff is hard work, granted, but it can also be great fun!

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Susan Mac Nicol (part 1)

My Guest this week is a no-holds-barred authoress who's willing to tackle sensitive subjects in her writing that others may prefer to ignore. Going boldly where others fear to tread, without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Susan Mac Nicol

Ahh - the pleasure and gratification of author research ...and its rather surprising impacts

I have to say that the one part I’ve really enjoyed about writing books is the research bit. I have learned more about ‘stuff’ I would never have known about, by writing, than I could possibly have dreamed of.

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Take my first book ‘Cassandra by Starlight’ for example. I knew this was going to be a romance novel about an older woman and younger man, but I wanted it to be more than the sum of its parts. So I hummed and hawed on an idea I had and did some research on the topic of female on male rape. When I saw how controversial it was, I decided it had to go in the book somehow.  So my poor leading man was subject to some violent sexual abuse and that book topic has sparked off a path for me that I never thought I would tread. I’ll tell you more about that later. Suffice it to say that I think this debut novel led me into where I am now and what I was meant to be doing.

For my next work in progress, ‘Saving Alexandria’ (it’s not yet out) I had to research the world of cults, S and M practices, Stockholm Syndrome and sexual domination both emotionally and physically. It was a lot of fun and I now know 101 uses for a flogger and handcuffs along with other assorted paraphernalia that I won’t mention in a family friendly guest post.  My poor web browser didn’t know what hit it and if any of my family had seen me researching some of the material, they’d have died on the spot. Thank God I have my very own password protected laptop that no one else is allowed to use.

My first foray into the world of erotic detective and crime fiction is another work in progress called ‘Born Human’. This led me on a journey of discovery into the world of bisexual men, police procedures, the topic of retributivism and the punishment fitting the crime, and the old adage ‘an eye for an eye’ when it comes to meting out justice. Some are again controversial subjects, underpinned by human rights –or, if the main male protagonist in my book, Anthony Parglietto, gets his way, the lack of them.

And now I have my foray into the world of writing gay male romance. (I hear you chuckling from here. Stop it.)  This is a genre enjoyed by mainly straight women all over the world if the stats are to be believed. The fascination with this genre started when I was researching for ‘Born Human’ for my bisexual, psychopathic serial killer. I needed to write some sexy scenes so of course, research was needed…I knew a little bit about how it was all done but obviously not enough from what I discovered.

I found I enjoyed it so much I branched out into reading more in the male/male romance genre and I was hooked. So much so, I decided to start writing it as well. I did a recent blog post on the particular joys of said research ( here ). 

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I’m currently writing my second one in this genre called ‘Waiting for Rain’, with plans for a third one in the pipeline, where I re-introduce some loveable characters from my debut novel.

And now to clarify my earlier statement when I said there was a reason I’d had my first book published and included such a controversial topic.

Overwhelmingly, the area into I which I have been drawn as a result of researching and using something in my book is the rights of male sexual abuse survivors and the issues they face in telling their stories. You can see some of the posts ( here ).

I have met fascinating characters (like the wonderful James Landrith, whose story was the inspiration behind the rape scene in my book, and a man called Stephen, who was himself raped by two men when he was sixteen and who has just written his autobiography), during this journey. I’ve been drawn into their world in a way I would never have thought possible.

This rite of passage has culminated in being asked to write the auto biography of a man we’ll call Joe, who was subject to same-sex child abuse during his years in the Boy Scouts and wants nothing more than to tell his story. His individual story is part of a very much bigger one currently in the US, being the scandal of the ‘Boy Scout Perversion Files’, where known paedophiles were shielded by the BSA and left to wreak havoc on young boys’ lives.  Joe and I have a story to put together and I don’t think for one minute it’s going to be easy. It will be an emotional roller coaster for both of us, especially for Joe.  I feel privileged in being the one to help him.

If you’d like to find out more about this, here’s a link.

But I think we are both up for the task, and hopefully ‘Joe’s Voice’ will be heard and will enable others that are perhaps hiding in the dark to come forward and tell their stories. That’s Joe’s ultimate aim and I will be doing everything I can do to help him get there.

PART 2 of Sue's post can be read here

Bio

Sue Mac Nicol was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. At the age of eight, her family moved to Johannesburg, South Africa where she stayed for nearly thirty years before arriving back in the UK in December 2000.

Sue works full time in the field of regulatory compliance for a company in the financial services industry in Cambridge. But she still finds time to work until the small hours of the morning doing what she loves best – writing. Since her first novel, Cassandra by Starlight, was penned, Sue has written the other two books in her Starlight trilogy, four other novels, two short stories and a screen play based on Cassandra. Her passion is keeping herself busy creating worlds and characters for her readers to enjoy.

Sue is a member of Romance Writers of America and Romantic Novelists Association in the UK. She is also a member of a rather unique writing group, called the Talliston Writer’s Circle, which in itself has a story all of its own to tell, and lives in the rural village of Bocking, in Essex, with her family.

Her plan is to keep writing as long as her muse sits upon her shoulder. Her dream is to one day get that big old house in the English countryside overlooking a river, where she can write all day and continue to indulge her passion for telling stories.

Sue can be contacted at:

Personal website:  www.susanmacnicol.com 

Author:  www.boroughspublishinggroup.com

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/SusanMacnicol7

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/susiemax77

Cassandra by Starlight Facebook page:  http://on.fb.me/RQYv3Z

Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/susiemax777/

Blogs:  http://susanmacnicol.tumblr.com/ & http://www.susanmacnicol.com/blog/

LinkedIn:  http://linkd.in/YFWZ40

Writing is an integral part of Mankind's progress and should be fearless, pushing against boundaries that others would impose. Thank you, Sue, for sharing your quest with us.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

a PACT… with YOU

Dear Reader-of-my-novels, yes, YOU; the one cowering behind my latest offering…

I would like ten minutes of your time; five now and five later.

As you immerse yourself in the world and events I have created, especially for your enjoyment, on the (electronic) page, do you ever wonder how those few hours of your reading pleasure came to be?

No, this isn’t a philosophical discussion.

It’s about scales, balances, Yin and Yang.

Payback, in short.

I sense a disturbance in the force; I’d like to make amends, with your help.

To do so, I propose a PACT. A PACT with YOU:

I, Eric J. Gates, do hereby promise

1. To write intriguing, original, thrilling tales,
2. To focus said tales on providing entertainment for You, dear Reader,
3.  To transport you to new worlds, introduce you to new and interesting people, to involve you in breath-taking adventures; in short, to boldly go…
4. I might make you miss your train or bus; I’ll give it my best shot,
5. You may forget to pick up the kids, it’s happened…
6. Your food/tea/coffee will go cold; almost a guarantee…
7. I will alter Time; it will pass without you being aware.
8. Above all, you will forget whatever troubles you have, for a while at least; the fate of my characters will become your only concern.

In return, my friend, I ask only one favour: 

Five minutes of your time, once you have finished reading one of my books, to write a short review and post it on Amazon or Goodreads. 

In doing so, not only are you providing inestimable feedback for me, you are sharing your opinion with others who may be searching for the same experience.

Help me, help your fellow readers; 

Yin and Yang; 

                                     Serenity will reign in the force; 

                                                                                            Tranquillity will have landed.

You can start NOW, if you wish…

If you have previously read ‘2012’, Full Disclosure’, the CULL’, or ‘Leaving Shadows’, there’s no time like the present…

Thank you.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

My Guest: Wodke Hawkinson

This week I have a double helping for you. These ladies show us how to create and maintain a successful writing partnership and produce suspense thrillers to envy. Ladies and Gentlemen,


Wodke Hawkinson

The Three C’s of Collaboration

A lot of elements go into a successful co-writing experience. But the following three basic considerations will apply to almost any type of writing collaboration.

Compatibility

When working with a writing partner, compatibility is very important, not only between writing styles, but also in regard to your personalities, work ethic, expectations and goals, and approaches to conflict resolution.

We are fortunate to have been friends long before we became co-authors, so a large part of the compatibility question was already decided. Before starting on our first novel, we did some writing exercises to determine if we could work well together. We also discussed expectations and found that we both want to turn out the best possible end product, regardless of how many revisions it takes. We have similar dedication to the process of writing and we share a desire to work through any disagreements. Even though we have known each other for years, there was still a lot of very necessary discussion on these points.

For writers thinking of collaborating we would suggest detailed dialogue with your potential partner(s) to clarify the following issues: How do you each feel about revisions? Can you take criticism? How many words/pages do you feel should be written per day? How many words should a finished book contain? How will you resolve disagreements about plots, characters, sentence structure, etc.? How will you divide the work on each project?

The more compatible you are on these points, the smoother your writing partnership will go.

Communication

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This seems like a no-brainer, but it can surprise you how much different your viewpoint is from your co-author’s. For instance, when writing our second novel we assumed we had pretty much the same idea of how a particular house would look. When it came time to write the scenes, we were surprised to learn we each had wildly differing images in mind. This experience taught us it’s a good idea to decide as much as possible in advance of writing the first page. Of course, not everything can be decided ahead of time because the writing process is a fluid thing and often changes are made mid-story, but much can be determined at the beginning.

How do we accomplish this? Pictures help. We find photos on the internet of what our characters look like. We also use pictures as a starting point for structures. Even animals. These pictures never make their way into our books; they are for our use only. Diagrams and maps are useful tools as well. For instance, the Guju bird in our novel Tangerine is loosely based on a white peacock; and before finishing Betrayed we knew exactly how Lance’s cabin was laid out because we had already drawn a diagram.

We also find it beneficial to describe our characters, just for our own information, well in advance of starting the story. We need to know what their personalities are, their histories, their attitudes, their approaches to situations, their habits, their flaws, their positive qualities.

The bottom line is, never assume you and your co-writer have the same idea in mind. That said, do we always get all the bases covered? No, of course not. There are still times when something will crop up and we’ll be surprised at each other’s perspective. Then at least one of us has to reconfigure her mental outlook, and often we end up somewhere between our individual visions.

Compromise

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Ego has no place in writing. Confidence, yes. Ego, no. If you are so married to your work that you refuse to make changes, working with a writing partner may not be the right move for you. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal in your writing is to produce the best possible end result. If something will make your project better, then it’s worth considering.

For us, there is a lot of compromise, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. For instance, one of us wanted a character of ours to have scars and the other did not like the idea. In a separate story, one of us wanted a character’s wife to be a baker, but the other didn’t think it necessary to include her livelihood. A trade ensued. We kept the part about the baker and eliminated the scars. This was an agreement we could both live with. Often if one of us has a cherished line of dialogue or other element we wish to keep in the story, the other will acquiesce. Then the next time around, the one who previously yielded will prevail. And sometimes you have to admit the other person’s idea was the best. It’s a balance.

There will be times when no compromise is acceptable. Our best advice for those times involves three things. Number one; be ready to make your case for why you want a certain element in the story. Back it up with good reasons. Number two; be willing to listen as your partner makes his/her case. Ask questions and sincerely make an effort to see the other’s point of view. Be willing to give the matter careful consideration. And number three; know when you need to take a break from each other. It might be just a several hours or possibly even a couple of days before you can come together again and resolve the issue.

Methodology

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There are four main steps in our process.

1. Planning. We take an idea and toss it around. Sometimes one of us will have a clearer vision than the other. In those cases, communication plays a very important role. Through many hours of discussion, we lay out the gist of the story, work with outlines, photos for inspiration, maps, and diagrams.

2. One of us begins the book with a chapter or two. When completed, it is then sent to the other for editing, revision, and addition of material. We pass it back and forth. Sometimes we assign certain parts. For instance, if we know a fight scene and a love scene are both approaching, we assign one scene to each of us. However, ultimately we both work on all scenes, making our own contributions and suggesting changes. This step is the actual writing of the book.

3. Editing. When we have finished a book, each of us will go through the entire thing, make comments, and send it back to the other. She will then consider the comments, accept or reject the suggested changes, and read through the entire book to make her own suggestions for revision. This back-and-forth continues until both of us feel there is nothing left to add or subtract from the manuscript. This way, the book is gone through multiple times by each of us until we are satisfied with the result.

4. Proofreading. It’s important to note that even with multiple proofreading efforts, errors sneak in. After publishing the book, we each re-read it in its published form to ferret out any mistakes that slipped past the pre-publication proofreading stage.

Advantages to co-writing

There are many advantages to the co-writing experience. For purposes of brevity, we will mention only three.

1. An expanded supply of ideas. Co-writing gives you access to another person’s brain, their perspective, their entire history of experiences, and their creative ideas. This can add dimension to the story that had not occurred to you.

2. Two sets of eyes. It is a huge advantage to have two sets of eyes as far as editing and proofing are concerned. What you miss, hopefully your co-author will catch, and vice versa.

3. A division of labor. Splitting the workload can be a relief. It can also mean getting twice as much accomplished or finishing twice as fast.

Author bio and books:

Wodke Hawkinson is the name under which Karen Wodke and P.J. Hawkinson produce their co-authored works. Each has published a solo work. Together, along with several short story singles, their books include:

Tangerine - Romance and intrigue in a future where space travel is commonplace and aliens a part of everyday life.

 Betrayed - Brooklyn is taken captive during a botched carjacking. And so her nightmare begins.

 Betrayed  - Alternate Ending - Written especially for readers of Betrayed, this publication begins at chapter 49 of the original novel and takes the story in a completely different direction.

 Zeke - A dark novel of sexual obsession and psychological suspense. How could a man who looks so good be this wicked?

 CatchHer in the Rye - Selected Short Stories Vol. One - Thirty-one short tales from various genres.

 Blue- Selected Short Stories Vol. Two - Eighteen short stories, three of which are novelette-sized. A cross-genre reading experience.

 Alone- Selected Short Stories Vol. Three - Eighteen genre-spanning works of short fiction that include drama, humor, sci-fi, and paranormal.

Karen and P.J. can be located at the following:

Website: http://wodke-hawkinson.com/

Reader & Fellow Indie Authors site: http://findagoodbooktoread.com/

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Wodke-Hawkinson/e/B00572KLX2/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1 

Smashwords author page: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wodkehawkinson

Barnes & Noble page: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/wodke-hawkinson

Twitter ID: https://twitter.com/WodkeHawkinson

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wodke.hawkinson

Thanks for the Co-Authoring Masterclass, Ladies; it has been both instructive and encouraging. My best wishes to you both.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com

Changing Jackets

With the forthcoming launch of my new thriller, 'Leaving Shadows', just around the corner, I thought it time to brush the cobwebs from the bookshelf and make a few changes.

Hope you like them.

Amazon Link

Amazon Link    

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And so as not to be left out...

My Guest: Thomas Block

Today I’m privileged to have as my guest an outstanding best-selling author of Techno-Thrillers, and someone who has directly contributed to the success of yet another best-selling thriller writer. Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thomas Block

A writing journey

I was a professional pilot for a long time (I finally retired more than a dozen years ago), and a professional writer for almost as long as I flew airplanes. While my airline flying is behind me, the writing portion of my professional life hasn’t ended in the least; matter of fact, it’s been cranked up a peg or two in the past several years.

I flew for an airline for over 36 years, ending my career crossing the North Atlantic several times a month as I plied my way between the US and various European cities - just like my characters do in my latest novel Captain. My professional writing began a few years after my airline flying, first strictly with magazine work but then on to novels as I began helping my childhood friend Nelson DeMille as he began his own bestselling novelist career. Over the years, I have assisted Nelson DeMille with a good many of his novels in one way or another, and you’ll find that fact in most of his novels on the acknowledgement page - including a very generous mention of my new novel Captain inside DeMille’s newest novel, The Panther, which was released in October, 2012. Here is an extract from that acknowledgement section of The Panther:

“Many of my novels have benefited from the assistance of my childhood friend Thomas Block, US Airways Captain (retired), columnist and contributing editor to aviation magazines, and co-author with me of Mayday, as well as the author of seven other novels.  Although Tom has retired as an International captain, he has not retired from writing, which does not require good eyesight or quick reflexes, and Tom has recently published his seventh novel, Captain, available on his website: www.ThomasBlockNovels.com.

Many thanks, too, to Tom’s lovely wife, Sharon Block, former flight attendant for Braniff International and US Airways, for her timely and careful reading of the manuscript and her excellent suggestions, as well as her keen eye for typos and bad punctuation.  Sharon’s reading skills have been invaluable to both me and Tom, as our minds tended to wander in high school English class.  What we were thinking about is another story, but we both knew we’d someday have a lady in our lives who knew how to proofread.”

In 1978, with Nelson DeMille’s help and introductions (his breakthrough novel By the Rivers of Babylon had made him into an International bestselling novelist the year before), I signed a contract to produce my first airplane action/adventure novel Mayday - which went on to also become an International bestseller. In 1997, Nelson and I took the out-of-print Mayday, revised and updated it together, then republished the novel with both our names as co-authors. That version became a CBS Movie of the Week in October, 2005, and is still readily available from Nelson DeMille’s extensive backlist.

During the 80’s I wrote five additional novels that had a good run of success throughout the world. For various logistical reasons I didn’t find myself writing any novels through the 90’s, although I did do even more work with Nelson DeMille through that period and well into the new century. With all of my old novels long out of print (excepting Mayday), I realized that with the dawning of the new era of publishing for both print and ebook versions, that I could go back to those older novels (the rights to those works had long since reverted to me), extensively revise and update them, and then send them back out to once again see the light of day - now dressed up in their modern-day clothing.

All of these novels were basically airplane-theme action/adventure, although they ran a gamut from hypersonic airlines on through Airships and even a detective story. You can see all of the details of these novels - which continue to sell nicely and receive good reviews - at our website. 

But in the back of my mind I had yet another story - a new story that I wanted to tell in what I consider a classic manner, with emphasis on plot, motivation and timing - and with an appropriate cross-section of characters. While writers have debated continuously whether it was best to begin the idea of a new novel with ‘plot’ or ‘characters’, I’m firmly from the school of ‘plot’. To me - especially in the action/adventure/mystery genres that I’ve worked in - I need to have a ‘plot’ in my mind and then I’ll discover that appropriate characters will simply show up to advance that storyline as I continue writing. The other way, of course, is to develop a few interesting characters and have the ‘plot’ develop around them, but that’s not my particular working method.

 As always, my new novel would be an aviation-theme action/adventure. But unlike many of the modern stories I was reading, I intended right from the beginning not to pump it up unnecessary violence, sex and endless mayhem. To me, too many modern novels (and especially modern movies!) are hardly more than comic books with storylines that don’t hang together and with endless and brutish snapping from one scene to the next as if the creators expected that the audience had an attention span (and a companion attention to detail) that could only be measured in the smallest portions possible.

So I began writing Captain, a story that was developed in, as I’ve said, what I consider more of a classic fashion - old fashioned, really, because it would have an unwinding beginning, a solid middle built from those earlier chapter underpinnings, and what I wanted to become a very satisfying ending.

Captain is a story about what happens to the crew and passengers on a particular flight from Rome, Italy to New York when unthinkable things begin to happen to their airliner. It is full of characters that readers have repeatedly told me that they loved - and also loved to hate. It is an action/adventure tale with a backdrop of emotions. It is a novel that slowly moves from scene to scene - but at a fast pace.

Amazon Link 

Is that sort of slow/fast mix possible? Look at the classic movies Casablanca and Dances With Wolves, or the novel Lonesome Dove. That’s exactly what I was trying to do with Captain; a number of reviewers and general readers have told me that, to them, Captain is a powerhouse of emotions while it is simultaneously packed with a very high level of action, intrigue and adventure.

When I finished Captain we sent it to several New York publishing houses but their editors initially told me that ‘airplane stories were out’ and ‘this isn’t what readers want these days’. Since Captain was the story that I wanted to tell and in the manner that I wanted to tell it, I elected to go with my own gut feelings about the novel and stick with what I had. Captain is now published Internationally in print editions, all ebook formats, and I’m just beginning the process of having Captain (and all my other action/adventure/mystery novels) put into audio-book form.

Speaking of reviews, it’s quite an interesting education for a writer to spend a little time with the growing mound of reviews and comments that you get (and instantly, for that matter) courtesy of the Internet. While it’s silly to expect any book to be all things to all people, it’s quite a revelation to see such a broad spectrum of opinions on exactly the same issues/segments within a particular novel; here are a couple of examples from Captain:

The flying scenes (which is only one-ply of the novel’s multiple layers of storyline and character development) were created to be absolutely authentic - I used my own 36+ years of airline flying and my own experiences at piloting wide-body jetliners across the oceans to develop a very real sense of what can and might go on in an airliner. Most of the Reader Reviews and comments that have come from pilots have said things such as “…everything is very accurate and realistic”, “Thomas Block knows his stuff, both aviation and writing” and “As a 10,000+ hour licensed pilot, I found this to be a very accurate and exciting book”. Now, to balance that out, I did get one review from a fellow who said he was a ‘retired airline pilot’ and that the novel was “totally unbelievable and unrealistic”. How, I wondered, could he possibly say that? I came to the eventual conclusion that this man must have personally ‘identified’ with the actions of the characters that I created to become the ‘bad guys’ and, thus, to him, the good guys were “unbelievable and unrealistic”.

Another example of never being ‘all things to all readers’ are the psychological/emotional undercurrents throughout the novel. Here are some of those reader reviews: “…excellent character development across its entire complement”, “Something for everyone - action, romance, intrigue”, “Wonderful characters that will pull you in”, “…several sub-stories made me consider the meaning of life and the way people react to stress” and “Most compelling is the parallel between the psychological impact upon people in life threatening situations”. Sometime after those reviews were posted, one man wrote that “…the action was okay, but it was full of psycho-babble and bad romance-novel stuff”. Oh, well - I guess I struck out with him.

Here’s my own - obviously very prejudiced - opinion of my latest action/adventure thriller: Captain is an exciting adventure story that you can curl up and spend an enticing, intriguing, enjoyable time with. That’s not just my opinion, but also the opinion of a good percentage of the readers who have already spent time with Captain. You can see those reviews for yourself on our website, or directly through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.

I’m very proud of what Captain has meant to the readers who have found the novel to be the experience that I intended. These readers were quite satisfied with the time and effort they spent with the crew, the passengers and the other characters involved in the emotional saga of Trans-Continental Airlines Flight 3.  As the creator of Captain, I have every hope that you will be, too.

Welcome aboard.

Amazon Link >

Amazon Link >

Bio:

Thomas Block has written a number of aviation-oriented novels, many which have gone on to acquire best-seller status in numerous countries. His novel writing began with the publication of "Mayday" in 1979. That novel was rewritten with his boyhood friend, novelist Nelson DeMille in 1998 and remains on DeMille's extensive backlist. "Mayday" became a CBS Movie of the Week in October, 2005.

Several of the other novels by Block include "Orbit" (a top bestseller in Germany, among other nations), "Airship Nine", "Forced Landing" (also done as a radio serialization drama in Japan), "Skyfall", "Open Skies" and "Captain". Thomas Block is still writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has edited and updated his novels into ebooks and printed editions.

Block's magazine writing began in 1968 and over the next five decades his work has appeared in numerous publications. He worked 20 years at FLYING Magazine as Contributing Editor, and as Contributing Editor to Plane & Pilot Magazine for 11 years. Block became Editor-at-Large for Piper Flyer Magazine and Cessna Flyer Magazine in 2001. During his long career as an aviation writer he has written on a wide array of subjects that range from involvement with government officials to evaluation reports on most everything that flies.

An airline pilot for US Airways for over 36 years before his retirement in April, 2000, Captain Thomas Block has been a pilot since 1959. Since 2002, he has lived on a ranch in Florida with his wife Sharon where they board, compete and train horses.  

Complete information (including direct links to booksellers) is available at http://www.ThomasBlockNovels.com and also through the author’s Ranch website at http://www.FlyingB-Ranch.com.  

For Facebook users, additional information about Thomas Block Novels can be found at two interlinked Facebook sites:

http://www.Facebook.com/Captain.by.Thomas.Block

http://www.Facebook.com/ThomasBlockNovels.

Thank you, Thomas, for this interesting insight to your journey as a best-selling thriller writer. It goes to show that personal experience is invaluable when imbuing a novel with convincing authenticity, and younger aspiring authors should take note of this when researching for their work.

Eric @ www.ericjgates.com