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How Western Author Charles Ray Scored Two Top Ten Westerns In One Month
Below is a link from Nick Wale’s ‘Novel Ideas’, talking about my two recent Mountain Man books, which have made it up into Amazon’s Top 10 Western Novels for much of the past week or two.
http://How Western Author Charles Ray Scored Two Top Ten Westerns In One Month
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History versus Heritage
While I usually only write here about books and writing, current events are such, and the debate so rancorous, I felt compelled to share my thoughts, especially on the issue of preserving Confederate generals’ names on some of our most important army bases, and the President’s childish petulance over bipartisan agreement that they should be removed. He talks about maintaining an American heritage. Is he talking about the heritage we should all want to preserve and pass on to our descendants? I hope not. Here’s what I had to say about that:
The United States is currently in a full-blown crisis; actually, two full-blown crises.
In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has yet to run its course, we face the crisis of a rising awareness among a significant number of Americans that we need to take a long, hard look at how we treat our nation’s history, especially the history of race relations. The latter is playing out in an often-rancorous public debate about the status of symbols of the short-lived Confederate States of America, its flag, statues of its leaders, and the names of Confederate generals currently designating 10 army posts in the American south.
Those opposed to removing these symbols from public display, including the President, argue that they are symbols of our American heritage, and removing them erases our history. Such arguments show a lack of understanding of the difference between heritage and history.
Dictionaries define ‘history’ as an account and analysis of past events, while ‘heritage’ is defined as something that is handed down from the past that shows characteristics, culture, and tradition; in effect a nation’s birthright.
I do not argue that these symbols illustrate a heritage, nor that they are not a part of this country’s history. But I do wonder if they illustrate the heritage that we wish to claim as a ‘birthright,’ or a history that we wish to celebrate.
Leaders of the confederacy took up arms against the United States, and one of the motivations behind this act was the desire to preserve the peculiar institution of human slavery. Those military officers, many of them graduates of West Point, and active duty officers at the time, violated their oaths of office, and, in the words of some of our current serving and retired military officers, committed treason. There is no euphemistic way to put it. No matter how agonizing their decision to do so was, they committed treason.
Is this the heritage we want our brave men and women in uniform to consider as their own? As a 20-year army veteran, my response to that question is an unequivocal NO. Our country deserves better; our young people deserve better. Our President should know better.
I am not calling for history to be erased. These symbols are a part of our history, and they should be in museums or private collections where historical relics belong. They should not be on or in public institutions such as schools or federal military installations.
Contrary to the President’s assertions, these symbols do not stand for Winning, Victory, and Freedom. For my ancestors, they stand for Slavery, and for the men and women of today’s military, whose mission is to Win wars, they stand for Betrayal and Loss, and in the case of some of those who have been honored by their names on our most famous posts, Incompetence and Recklessness. Is this the heritage we wish to bequeath to the younger generation, the history we wish to honor? I think not.
Anyone who truly loves this country should wish to see it live up to the promises implied by our founding documents.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution describe the kind of heritage we should be striving for. Sure, many of the Founding Fathers, following the practice of the times, were slaveholders, but a deep dive into the background of the colonial independence movement indicates that most of them realized that the peculiar institution, as slavery was sometimes called, was at odds with what they were fighting for. They were looking toward the future, while today’s leadership seems fixated on looking at a romanticized and distorted past.
History doesn’t stand still. Today’s events will be tomorrow’s history. We can delete or ignore the chronicles of historical events, but we can’t actually erase history. Those events have happened, and had an impact on those living at that time. We might try to forget them, but they will have happened, and nothing can change that.
Heritage can also change, or perhaps it’s better to say that our idea of our heritage can evolve over time. As we look back on our past, we should try to understand our history, good and bad. The former to help us better understand our true heritage, the latter to avoid repeating our past mistakes.
All Americans who love their country should commit themselves to preserving those elements of our history that portray our better angels, for those are t he elements that make up a heritage worth preserving. We should insist that our political leaders do the same, or elect ones who will.
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Finding Your Zone
Whether you’re playing golf or writing the next Great American Novel, you will, on occasion find yourself transported to a mental realm where everything just seems to click into place. You perform almost in a kind of ‘out-of-body’ way. This condition is called being ‘in the zone,’ and it often results in outstanding performance.
As writers, I’m sure we’d all like to be ‘in the zone’ every time we sit down at the keyboard, or pick up a pen and notepad. We want our muse to guide us to that place where the right words just flow with ease. News flash! In my more than fifty years of writing I’ve learned that the muse ‘don’t work like that.’ Getting into the zone, whether you’re playing golf or writing, is something you have to do for yourself. Here’s how I finally learned how to do it.
When I write fiction, I approach the story as if it’s a movie. I picture in my mind what the characters are doing and saying, and why, and then convert those mental visions to words. For example, I introduce a new character, a garishly dressed fat man. Now, I could use hundreds of words to describe him and my protagonist’s reaction to him, but think about it; when you watch a movie, you get a quick look at a character and based on quickly-seen visual and auditory cues, you develop an attitude about that character. So, let’s take the aforementioned fat man. Here’s one way I might introduce him: “He waddled into the room, his man boobs jiggling under the green and black shirt he wore open to his sternum.” Do you have an image of this character in your mind from those words? You probably do, and you probably have some not-so positive vibes coming off him. See; all those words of description are not needed, and you can keep going with the story.
When I write like that, I’m not working off some detailed plan, and often I’ve written the words without a lot of conscious thought—after all, I’m just describing what I saw in my mind.
Working this way, I often knock out five to six thousand words a day when nothing happens to pull me from my computer. Sometimes, I go back and rework a passage after giving it some thought, but mostly I just look for those pesky typos that creep into your writing when you’re just banging out words. That’s okay, it’s the editing and rewriting that makes great prose even greater.
One other thing that might not sound like a sophisticated creative technique, but which works for me; I write every day. Sometimes it’s just entries in one of the many journals I keep, sometimes it’s a piece of nonfiction, like this present missive, but always, without fail, I generate words into sentences into paragraphs to the tune of about 2,000 words per day. That keeps the mental muscles facile.
The other thing I do to facilitate getting into the zone when I write, is I take breaks. Lots of breaks. I will write for two to three hours, and then I’ll grab my camera and go for a walk, or work a crossword puzzle, or even go to my mat and do some resistance band exercises. What does that have to do with improving your mental ability to write better, you ask? A lot, I say. It’s been shown that exercise not only improves your physical body and mood, but it does positive things to your mind. That old, ‘healthy mind in a healthy body,’ adage is real.
Okay, that’s it. Just a few short words to help you jump start your writing in 2020. And, before I sign off, I hope 2020 will be a productive writing year for all of you.
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Calabash Crossing’s Sheriff dressed to kill
My series Sheriff B.J. Kincaid, is about a young woman who wrangles her way into the job of sheriff of her home town, Calabash Crossing, Arizona–the town, by the way, is fictional. The first printing had some pretty good covers, but they’re being reissued with new covers. There was a bit of a glitch when someone in the editorial and art departments forgot that B.J. is not a man–minor issue that is being fixed–but if I may be so bold, it’s a western series you don’t want to miss.
If you want to catch up quickly, the first four stories are now available in one volume (for a great price). The Blazing Guns of the Lawman Kincaid (see what I mean about the gender confusion) is on Amazon. Get yours today.
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Creating Memorable Characters
Good fiction needs a good plot and needs to be written in an active voice that pulls the reader into the story. But, even more importantly, it needs characters that readers can identify with—and, not always in a positive way. The good guys need to be someone the reader can sympathize with and cheer for, and the villains need to be . . . villainous.
But, just creating the stereotypical hero or villain is not enough. Your good guy has to have faults if he or she is to be believable—not many of us are Mother Theresa—and, even the evilest villain was once a bouncing baby, probably loved by his or her mother.
So, how do you go about creating fully-formed, three dimensional characters that your reader can believe in? You might try what I do – go against type. How do you do this? Allow me to explain.
When I started my Al Pennyback mystery series, I made the character a military veteran who left the army after the death of his wife and son in an auto accident, and became a private investigator in the Washington, DC area. I wanted, however, to create a character who defied commonly accepted stereotypes. In order to do that, I made him a former special operations soldier, skilled in the use of all kinds of weapons, but who, because of an incident during his career, had decided that he would never use a firearm again if he could avoid it. So, now, you have a PI who is former military, an expert in martial arts, who refuses to carry a weapon. He uses his martial arts skills and wits to deal with bad guys. I did this with some trepidation, because in most of the fiction I’ve read, former Green Berets almost always use a weapon at some point in the story. I stuck to my guns, though (pun intended) and made a point of mentioning his dislike for firearms in every story (I saved the back story on why this was the case until the fifth or sixth book in the series).
I knew I’d found a winning formula when a colleague from my military days contacted me by email and informed me that he’d become a fan of my character, despite his opposition to guns because he had so many other good traits, e.g., loyalty to friends, diligence in his work, and his persistence in getting justice for the underdog. When he read the book in which I’d included the back story, he contacted me again to let me know that he now understood my characters aversion to firearms, and it made perfect sense. This particular reader is, I happen to know, an NRA member with strong views on the right to own firearms, and for him to agree with the way I’d created an anti-gun character, was all the validation I needed to know that I’d created a character that readers could get behind.
I do it in other stories as well. I’ve had the angelic looking, good as gold on the outside character who is actually a selfish psychopath, the rough looking, rough talking character who is a closet intellectual with a heart of gold, and so on.
The benefit of going against type is that it gives you characters who are like real people. You have heroes who sometimes do bad things for selfish reasons, and villains who are kind to their parents and like puppies.
So, get started on creating that memorable character for your fiction. You’ll find that your readers will thank you for it.
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Review of ‘The Water’s Fine
Excerpt From The Water’s Fine
“Polo likes to tell stories about the Sea of Cortez. His favorite is about El Lavadero, Las Animas. Las Animas is named after the church bells which ring to summon the lost souls, and El Lavadero means the washing machine. The dive site is often referred to as the washing machine of lost souls.Before we dove at El Lavadero one morning, I overheard Polo telling Bertie that the thousands of silver jacks schooling in the water are the lost souls. She twisted her ring and looked spooked while our group waited its turn to descend at the site. I thought maybe she wouldn’t come, but she did. Afterwards, she told me that when she saw the mass of circling jacks and thought of them as lost souls, she felt more sad than scared. I knew what she meant. I always say a prayer when I see the swirling fish, the sun glinting on their silver scales.”
Water’s Fine: Suspense Novel by Janice Coy
Publisher: Independently Published (April 22, 2019)
Category: Suspense, Family Fiction, Women’s Fiction
Tour dates: January/February, 2020
ISBN: 9781795669047
Available in Print and ebook, 312 pages
Description Water’s Fine: Suspense Novel by Janice Coy
Bertie Clark is excited for a week-long scuba trip with her husband exploring the underwater wonders of an ocean teeming with life – the Sea of Cortez.
But a tragedy on their dive boat sends both women into uncharted territory, questioning what they’ve always thought to be true, and fostering an unlikely friendship. Will either trust the invitation to “come on in, the water’s fine” again?
Praise Water’s Fine: Suspense Novel by Janice Coy
“I just finished The Water’s Fine by Janice Coy which means I am must bid farewell to the characters I have become attached to and I must close the cover on a plot that kept a firm grasp on my attention and continued to surprise. The act of reading this book can cause laundry to pile up, dust to gather and dirty dishes to dry crusty because one cannot stop reading from chapter to chapter – – from scuba action, to mystery, heartache, friendship, suspense and self discovery.
The author is artfully descriptive in all areas of scene and character development which draws you in and holds you! In fact, I would like to invite you to do a little scuba diving and not get wet? Slip on those fins, adjust your mask, get your regulator set and start reading The Water’s Fine.”- Kjans, Amazon
“Oh wow, what a well written book! Being someone who thinks that scuba diving is too scary to try I was drawn in by the author’s imagery. It captured all the anxiety of “breathing underwater”, the suspense of what dangerous creatures you could encounter as well as the absolute beauty and serenity you could feel while exploring the deep blue sea. I fell in love with her characters and was sucked into the mystery and suspense and enjoyed joining them on their journeys of self discovery, life and loss. I really enjoyed this book.”-Amazon Customer
Praise Smallest of Waves by Janice Coy
“Thanks to Coy’s descriptive, immersive world, the waves of Agave Beach leave a distinct impact in The Smallest of Waves. – Indie Reader
“A seaside mystery with an appealing heroine…Coy uses her beachside setting well, contrasting Agave Beach’s innocent sand castles and clueless tourists with the mysterious ocean – so foreign with its dark depths, sharks, kelp forests, and sea caves.” Kirkus Reviews
2017 Finalist San Diego Book Awards Association
About Janice Coy
Award winning Janice Coy is the author of five suspense novels. Her work is also published in four anthologies. She was a finalist at the San Diego Book Awards Association annual contest. She’s received the IndieReader Seal of Approval. A former journalist, Ms. Coy has received several awards for her reporting including a national award for best feature story in a community newspaper.
Ms. Coy is an advanced certified scuba diver; she’s run five half-marathons and summited Mt. Kilimanjaro. She lives in Southern California with her husband.
Website: http://janicecoy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Janice-Coy-182435188445057/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janicecoyauthor/
Buy Water’s Fine: Suspense Novel by Janice Coy
Giveaway Water’s Fine: Suspense Novel by Janice Coy
This giveaway is for the winner’s choice of one print or ebook copy of the book. Print is open to Canada and the U.S. only and ebook is available
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Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Jan 6 Kickoff & Interview
Catherine Cuzinlogic Jan 8 Guest review & Excerpt
Katy Goodreads Jan 9 Review
Lu Ann Rockin’ Book Reviews Jan 10 Review & Guest Post
Charles Ray’s Ramblings Jan 13 Review & Excerpt
Michael Amazon Jan 14 Review
Becky What U Talking Bout Willis Jan 15 Review & Excerpt
Dee Donadee’s Corner Jan 16 Review
Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Jan 17 Review
Ruth Amazon Jan 20 Review
Lisa’s Writopia Jan 21 Review
Lisa’s Writopia Jan 21 Guest Post
Avonna Loves Genres Jan 22 Review & Interview
Dawn Bound 4 Escape Feb 6 Guest Review
Jas International Book Reviews Feb 11 Review
Kathleen Celticlady’s Reviews Feb 14 Review
DTChantel Amazon Feb 21 Review
Infantina Periodical Gazette Feb 26 Review
My Review of ‘The Water’s Fine
Catalina Rodriguez and Bertie Clark have nothing in common but a love of scuba diving when they meet on the Calypso for a diving trip in the Sea of Cortez, but a tragedy during the trip, when another member of the party, Gordon Baker, on the trip with his wife and two daughters, dies during their last dive. As the dive master, Catalina feels responsible for his death, even though she learns later that he was suffering from a terminal disease, and chose to die. A certified rescue diver, Bertie also feels a sense of guilt for not doing something to prevent the tragedy. The two women have bonded during the trip, and even after Catalina gives up diving and returns to her home in San Diego, they stay in touch by phone.
Shortly after returning home, Catalina begins to suffer a string of seemingly unrelated catastrophes, but attributes them at first to stress as she tries to cope with the Calypso incident. But Bertie thinks otherwise, and is determined to help her get to the bottom of what’s going on.
The Water’s Fine by Janice Coy is a subtle, but intriguing story that defies neat categorization. The author moves readers slowly through a chain of events that become more deadly with each occurrence, weaving a deft mystery that will keep the reader guessing until the startling climax. I was put off at first by the switch from first person point of view (Catalina) to second person (Bertie), but as I continued to read, I discovered that this only heightened the tension, as I tried to solve the mystery ahead of the author’s disclosure. I failed, and the author succeeded. The answer to Catalina’s problems came as a surprise—a delightful, and skillfully-done surprise.
I received an advance review copy of this book, and I recommend it highly, even if you’re not a mystery fan. A true page-turner, it will grab your attention and hold it until the end.
I give Coy four stars for an entertaining read.
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Jacob Blade Vigilante series gets a face lift in 2020
Fans of the half-breed vigilante Jacob Blade are in for a treat in 2020. Thanks to the creative ingenuity of renown publicist Nick Wale and the fantastic art of Kevin Diamond, the entire series is being reissued this year with a new and exciting cover that’s sure to appeal to fans of the ‘shoot ‘em up’ western genre.
Jacob Blade was a simple farm boy living with his mother and father in Indian Territory until he came home from a trip to local markets one day and found his parents slaughtered by a group of itinerant outlaws. With his dying breath, Jacob’s father asked him to avenge their deaths, a task that he took on with relish. In the course of his quest, he discovered that there was a lot of evil infecting the western frontier, evil that he determined to help eliminate, one dead outlaw at a time.
This is just one of several series that I currently write, and is second only to the Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves in the joy it gives me to write.
The new covers give a sense of continuity to the series, and, in my humble opinion, illustrates the protagonist most effectively. I sincerely hope that readers will find them as attractive—and seductive—as I do, and welcome any comments. In the meantime, I’m currently working on another Jacob Blade adventure, with Jacob coming to the rescue of a small community of settlers in Nebraska who are being tormented by a greed rancher who wants to take their land. Keep an eye out for Sins of the Father, coming soon to Amazon.
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Soul Alley Screening
Toby Giles series gets eye-catching new theme cover
Unless you’re independently publishing and overseeing every aspect of your book’s launch, you probably don’t give a lot of thought to the cover. I do both, independent, and through small publishing imprints, and until recently paid little attention to the covers the publishers chose to affix to what I’ve submitted to them.
I did not book, Toby Giles: Tarnished Badge, the story of a runaway slave who is appointed sheriff of the all-white town of Jericho, Ohio, at the suggestion of publicist Nick Wales, which was published with the cover below:
Not a bad cover actually, and I had no complaints. But I so enjoyed the story, and based on sales, so did a large number of readers, I decided to do a sequel, Toby Giles: The Walls of Jericho. Here’s the cover chosen, and, in my opinion, it is perfect for the subject matter of the book.
The publisher thought so as well, because shortly after the release of this one, book one was reissued with a new cover:
Now, the two covers are identical except for the book title, but they’re clearly related to even the most casual shopper, and adorned with covers that are guaranteed to catch the eye.—don’t you think?
Kudos to DS Publications and Nick Wale for bringing a whole lot of cheer to one author’s life this holiday season.
