Taking a break from my writing
Every now and then, I have to step away from the keyboard, and let my mind relax. My writing alternatives are usually photography (outside) or art (in my garage studio), but when the weather is cold, those are uncomfortable. My daughter home schools her oldest child, though, and has asked me to teach her art, so on really blustery days, when I need a break from writing, I teach Samantha and her sister, Catie, how to draw and paint.
Our classroom is the dining table. As you can see in this photo, they take their lessons seriously, really getting into it. But, we also have fun. They like to make up funny stories to go with the pictures I have them do. The fascinating thing for me is how quickly and easily they absorb the techniques I teach them, while at the same time, bringing their own unique techniques to the use of those techniques.
Sammie, age 6, has a sophisticated technique, and tends to be a bit doctrinaire in her approach – but, still quite competent. Catie, on the other hand, at age 5, takes a more impressionistic approach to her drawing, and lets her imagination soar. After two hours with these two, my mind is completely refreshed, and I’m ready to get back to the second of my epic novels about pirates and the War of 1812.
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How I Write: Roll with the Flow
We humans love to label things. Writers are no exception, either. Take writing habits, for example, we label writers as either those who diligently map out their stories, plotters, or those who just start writing and go with whatever comes, sort of writing by the ‘seat of the pants, or, pantsers.
The problem with this is that a lot of writers don’t fall neatly into either category. Take me, for instance. I usually start my books in one of the following ways:
1. I list the chapters, and the main action in each, knowing generally how I want the story to end. As I write, though, I will often change action, or add chapters as some interesting action or event is suggested by the flow of the story.
2. I know generally how I want the story to end, and I plan the first chapter or two, and then start writing, going with the flow.
You will notice a common thread here; I always go with the natural flow of the story. Certain things just seem to logically follow other things.
Take, for example, my current work in progress, another in my Al Pennyback mystery series, featuring a retired army officer turned private detective in the Washington, DC area. Al is on retainer to a law firm, but the work they give him doesn’t take up too much of his time, so he takes cases involving people who are being put upon by the system, or who have no one else to turn to. Al is something of a knight errant, or a samurai without a master—otherwise known as a Ronin—and, he is always on the side of the downtrodden. In the current story, A Deal to Die For, his client is a spoiled rich girl, who he dislikes at first, but takes the case because she’s being falsely accused of murder.
Generally, my plan for this one was for him to prove her innocence after several false starts and a lot of time spent following red herrings. I decided that this one would be really complex, with several of the things that push Al’s buttons, like the presence of militia, and some play on 9/11, with a possible terrorist in the mix for interest. I mapped out the first nineteen chapters and began writing. The murder has already happened two days before the story begins, and Al’s task is to find the killer.
He begins working his way through the initial list of potential suspects, eliminating them one by one through diligent detective work, until he’s left with what he thinks is the most likely bad guy—only, I decided that he would really hit a wall when he learns that the most likely suspect is not what he first thought he was, and his nemeses, the militia bad guys start to crank up the heat and put his life in danger.
Now, if the militia guys are the real killers, the story’s about over, so I decided that this was too pat. In chapter 19, I have Al’s client fearing she’s about to be arrested, and unidentified bad buys tailing Al all over town. The clock’s ticking, and the stakes are cranked up to the max. I’ve kind of decided who the real murder is already, and now I’m just sending Al down a few false trails, so that when the killer is finally unveiled, readers will be surprised.
I’m now in the home stretch, and I’m planning a few confrontation scenes and some real nail-biting action just before Al finally finds the key clue that tells him where to look.
That, in a nutshell, is how I write. I go with the flow, and if the flow seems to be veering away from the rough sketch map I started with, I simply draw a new map. That is neither plotting, nor pantsing, but a combination of the two, which, being human, I will call plantsing.
So, having shared that bit of trivia with you, I will go back to my plantsing, and see what sprouts. Happy reading, and a glorious New Year to one and all.
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Cover Reveal – Lost Expedition
‘Vixen’ nominated for 2017 Readers Choice Award
I am excited to announce that my historical novel, Vixen, has been nominated for the 2017 Readers Choice Award. Please go to www.tckpublishing.com/readers-choice-voting/ and go to the Historical Fiction category. ‘Vixen’ is near the bottom of the page. You can vote by simply clicking on the cover image.
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The business side of writing
You’ve finished that book you’ve been slaving over for the past several weeks, or even months. Pulling just the right word or phrase from the depths of your mind was like passing a kidney stone, painful, but leaving you feeling like you’ve achieved something great. You think, now, the hard part’s over, and all you have to do is hit ‘publish,’ and then you sit back and wait for the accolades to come rolling in.
Well, I can assure you that, unless this is your first book, (in which case you already know this, so you can stop reading at this point), your work has just begun.
Writing is admittedly difficult, but it pales in comparison to the effort you must put into making sure your work gets read. Wait, you thought that writing it was what it takes to achieve that? No, like having a child, there’s a lot more effort required to make sure that child makes it in the harsh world that awaits. Writing is like procreation, it’s the creative part, the merging of sperm and egg to create that magical being. But, like a child, if you don’t do the nurturing and educating to prepare it for the real world, it will wither.
The really hard work for a writer is all that comes after—and sometimes, before—you put all those beautiful words on the screen. Those of you who have been at it a while know what comes next; the dreaded M word. Yes, marketing what you write. Your words mean nothing unless you get them in front of readers, and then entice those readers to . . . read them.
Marketing is the process of getting word of your words (okay, not very creative, but you get the point) to as many potential readers as possible, and convert those potential readers into not just readers of the specific book, but hopefully, customers for the next, and the next, and the one after that. Now, I’m assuming here, that you’re not a one-book wonder.
This won’t be a primer or guide to marketing—save the thanks, just read my books, that’s all the thanks I need—just a cautionary word to every writer out there. While you’re writing, don’t forget the need to get the word out.
You can do it in a number of ways. You can buy ads, give talks, blog, etc. Buying ads can get expensive, and unfortunately, until you become a known quantity, don’t offer much return for the investment. The talk circuit is not for everyone. Some writers are painfully shy, and like most people, fear public speaking more than death. Blogging is a relatively inexpensive way to get the word out, but takes time away from what you really want to do—write books.
Despite the problems, if you want to be known as a writer, want people to read what you write, you’ll have to take a deep breath, gird your loins, and dive in. I’d like to say it gets easier with time, but it doesn’t. It’s a slog. For every two months I spend writing a book, I spend an equal or greater amount of time promoting it. I also have to budget time to promote my back list, and in my case, with more than 60 books on that back list, this is not insignificant. In the end, though, it will pay off (and, I’m assuming here that you’ve written something people will want to read).
So, keep writing. Write every day. But, you will also need to carve out time each day to do the often unpleasant, and always grueling work of promoting, marketing your work.
That, my friends, is the business side of writing. If you want to know more details about my marketing activities, stay tuned. When I have time, I’ll do a short piece on my marketing plan, from which, I hope, you’ll get some ideas that you can use.
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Murder is as Easy as A,B,C – A new Ed Lazenby Cozy
Ed Lazenby allows himself to be roped into being a volunteer tutor at a local middle school. Retired, he has little else to do, other than play golf, hang around with his friends, Ernesto Cardozo, and the Wertheim sisters, Violet and Rose. Oh, and occasionally stick his nose in police investigations. And, since it’s only a couple of hours, three days a week, what can go wrong?
As Ed finds out the first week of his volunteer stint—a lot. When the school principal, an officious bureaucrat who rubs him the wrong way, is found dead in his office with a pair of pruning shears in his chest, Ed is the number-one suspect, because he found the body. The only way he can clear himself is to find the real killer. But, how do you do that when you’re the one the police think did it?
If you want to find out, check out Murder is as Easy as ABC, the fifth book in the Ed Lazenby cozy mystery series, available in a few days in paperback and Kindle version.
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The Schizophrenic Writing Life
I currently have over 60 published books—probably close to 70 right now, but I’m too busy to count them—and an editor friend of mine asked me how on earth I found the time to write so many. An interesting question, that; one I hadn’t given much thought to. Too busy writing, don’t you know.
But, it was a fair question, and I took a stab at answering her. As I was typing the email, recounting for her my writing process, a realization hit me—I’m something of an obsessive-compulsive, schizophrenic, anal-retentive, driven person; or, so would the writing routine I’ve been following for almost as long as I can remember seem to indicate. In the following paragraphs, I will outline it for you, and let you decide if I’m engaging in hyperbole or not.
First, a little background is in order. From the time I was 17, until I retired from the US diplomatic service in 2012, I was a government employee (20 years in uniform, but that’s also government employment). That meant, I moved frequently, had odd hours, and, while some of my work was exciting, I was mostly involved in repetitive, bureaucratic tasks.
During those years in government, I wrote. And, by this I mean, I wrote for publication. While I was in the army, I moonlighted on several occasions as a reporter for local newspapers—the only restriction was that I couldn’t write about things on the base where I was stationed. I also did freelance stuff for regional and national magazines. Now, this is called moonlighting, because you have to do it during non-duty hours. So, I pulled a lot of late-nighters, which isn’t a big problem, because for as long as I can remember I’ve only slept an average of 6 hours per night anyway. When I retired from the army and joined the US Foreign Service, I could no longer work directly for civilian publications, but I did continue freelancing, and again, I wrote early in the morning before going to work, and late at night after returning from work—seven days a week, holidays included.
Then, in 2006, I decided to take a serious stab at writing something longer than a newspaper or magazine article. I’d been secretly scribbling a couple of novels on occasion, thinking that I’d like to actually write a book, but hadn’t quite built up the nerve to finish one. A young man who worked for me when I was ambassador to Cambodia (2002-2005) suggested that I compile my leadership techniques into a book because, though they were a bit odd, they were effective. There was another thing added to my after (and before) work hours routine; scribbling out the chapters of that damned book, which took me two years. I finally got it finished and published in 2008. That was a traumatic experience, one that I’ll not repeat in this lifetime—but, that’s another story—but, it demonstrated to me that I could, in fact, write books in my spare(?) time.
So, from that point, I began to seriously engage in writing, making it a point to write at least an hour every morning before going off to work, and another hour or two in the evening before falling into bed. On weekends, when there was no official function, or the wife and I weren’t traveling, I wrote at least three or four hours.
I’d never given it much thought before, but I soon discovered that when you do this, and, like me, you’re a fairly competent and proficient typist (I do 60 WPM), you can crank out a lot of words each month, and I mean a lot. I had a target of 1,000 to 2,000 words a day, something an old country editor in North Carolina taught me back in the 1970s as good exercise for the writing muscles. Now, if you do the math, in a 30-day month, that amounts to 30,000 to 60,000 words—a novelette or a medium-length novel, and in one month. Of course, if you factor in proofreading and all the other stuff you have to do, it would take longer than a month, but, on the other hand, when you look at four weekend days per month with an opportunity to crank out 6 to 8,000 words, you can do it in even less. Once I discovered this, I was off to the races.
After a not-so amicable divorce from the ‘publisher’ who’d issued my first two books, and the decision to immerse myself in the waters of independent publishing (which entailed learning layout and design and a few other skills), I began to crank books out in earnest. I started with a mystery series featuring a retired army special ops guy working as a PI in Washington, DC, soon added a western series about the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the US Ninth Cavalry, while still doing blogging and a little copywriting and content generation on the side. To my surprise, while they didn’t make any bestseller lists, my books actually began to sell—be bought—and reviews indicated people were reading and responding to them. Sometimes those responses were negative, but I learned from those negative reviews, and I think the books got better. Hell, I know they got better; I went from selling two to three copies a month to fifty or more, and some months I even managed to sell as many as 800 copies of one of my e-book versions. I even have a couple of books that are what I call my perennial sellers. My book on Bass Reeves, the first African-American appointed a deputy US marshal west of the Mississippi, which has been out for three years now, averages 10 to 15 e-book and 4 to 10 paperback sales per month, even now. That’s nothing to brag about, but with more than 20 books doing that now, it is significant. Last year (2016) my net income from book royalties passed the $7,000 mark. That doesn’t put me in the Fortune 500, not even the Fortune 500,000, but for an indie author, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
So, you might be asking, what the hell does all this have to do with schizophrenia or writing process? Okay, fair point. I guess I did digress a bit there. Now that I’m officially retired from government service and am the master of my own schedule, here’s my writing process.
I get up every morning between 5:00 and 7:00 AM, depending on how late I went to bed, and after showering and fixing my breakfast, I hit the keyboard. I write until 9:30 or 10:00, and then take a break. I watch a little morning TV—the oldies channels with series from the 60s and 70s—or go to my studio I’ve set up in my garage, and paint or take pictures. Then, after lunch, I hit the keyboard for another hour (1:00 to 2:00 PM). I take another break of an hour or so, and maybe work in the yard or paint some more. Supper for me is around 6:30 PM, and then I plan to be at the keyboard by 7:30 or 7:45, and I write until 10:00 or 11:00 PM. That’s every day, unless I have to go out for a consulting job, a speech, or to conduct the occasional workshop. When that happens, I take a notebook with me and write notes on the subway or plane, or in the hotel if it’s a long trip. One way or another I get that minimum of 2,000 words written each and every day.
It has become such a routine now, I don’t really even think about it. Hadn’t 
thought about it, in fact, until my editor friend asked her question. But, that’s the answer to how I’ve done over 60 books in 11 years. The thing is, I wasn’t even counting them as I was cranking them out, and didn’t even notice it until a few years ago, a friend who was introducing me to speak at an event, mentioned that I’d writing a sh-tload of books. I still don’t stop to count them often, but every now and then, someone will mention it, and I’ll count. It keeps going up. I don’t have a target, maybe to have at least one book for each year of my life—no, I know, to have more than 100. That’s nice, round number, don’t you think.
Oh, and was I right? It’s schizophrenia, isn’t it?
