Tag: writing process

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Interview with Raven Tale Publishing

Interview with Author Charles Ray

August 25, 2021

Today, we have an interview with Charles Ray. Charles has been writing fiction since his teens, and actually won a national short story writing contest sponsored by his Sunday school magazine. He has done articles, cartoons, reviews, and photography for a number of publications in Asia, Africa, and America. He writes in several genres: mystery, fantasy, urban fantasy, and humor, in addition to non-fiction. His favorite happens to be mystery. Charles is a very experienced author and has a lot to say about his work, so without further delay we present, an interview with Charles Ray.
 

Where did you get the idea for your characters? Was it based on any personal experience?

I had this idea for a story about a samurai who came to America and got involved in adventures with a cowboy. When I was asked to do a Western horror story, after running a number of plots through my mind, I had this epiphany. What if there was an isolated area—like the Dakota badlands—where a few dinosaurs had survived but were cut off from civilization, but an earthquake or some other natural disaster removed the barriers? Then, I thought, who would be most capable of dealing with these monsters? Well, what about a samurai who comes from a culture that believes in dragons? It wasn’t based on personal experience, but as how many of my characters and plots get started – I sit somewhere in a corner and start asking myself, what if(?) and then take the craziest question that comes to mind and start writing.

 
What got you interested in becoming an author?

When I was young, I was something of a recluse. I preferred books to dealing with people and spent a lot of time making up stories. When I was twelve or thirteen, my English teacher talked me into entering a Sunday school magazine short story contest, and my story won first place. Ever since, I’ve aspired to be an author. For years, from the early 1960s until 2008, I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, and the occasional poem for publication. My first book, which wasn’t even fiction, was published in 2008. I published my first fiction, a mystery, in 2010, independently because of the bad experience I had had with the publisher of my first two nonfiction books. I began branching out shortly afterwards and have done urban fantasy, traditional fantasy, and children’s books. I did some historical fiction that because of the period also qualified as Westerns, which led to doing a series on the Buffalo Soldiers and a series of books about Bass Reeves, one of the first African-American deputy U.S. marshals west of the Mississippi. That eventually became a focus on writing Westerns. I was, as I said before, asked to write a Western horror story, and since I had not done horror before took it on as a challenge.

 
When you start writing your story, do you plan to write it into a series of books or did you want to write just one?

Sometimes when I start a book I have it in mind to do a series, as was the case with my Caleb Johnson Mountain Man series. At other times, I only have the single story in mind. When I started ‘The Awakening of Dragons,’ that was the case, but as I neared the end, I saw the potential for at least one or two more stories with the same main character, so I ended it on a kind of cliff hanger. Not the unresolved issue kind of cliff hanger, but the kind where something happens that makes a reader wonder if there’s more to come.

What is the best cure for writer’s block?

Writing every day, even if it’s just impressions of the weather or making journal entries, is the way I avoid writer’s block. Another is to have more than one writing project going at a time. That way, when you’re having trouble coming up with that next bit of dialogue or narrative, or you can’t figure out what to do about a certain plot twist, you can move to a fresh story and work on it for a while. I find this often helps me get past problems with a story. The main thing, though, is to write, write, and write some more.

 
What do you do to pass the time when you’re not writing? Do these hobbies influence your writing in any way?

I have a full menu of things to do. I spend time with my grandchildren, who also provide me inspiration for some of my stories or for the weekly column I write for a newspaper in the Philippines. I keep a camera with me wherever I go, and take tons of photos, some of which I have used in my nonfiction books, and I like painting and drawing. I was once an editorial cartoonist for a newspaper in North Carolina and did covers and cartoons for magazines in the 1970s. Both photography and art give me ideas for stories. For example, I love photographing butterflies and the sight of two butterflies fighting in midair gave me the idea for a couple of stories I’ve done. Nature photography is my favorite and is the inspiration for a short story I’m currently writing for a special volume planned soon where I merge a love of nature with the life of a mountain man to try and show what motivates a person to become a mountain man in the first place.

Do you ever get tired of writing in the same genre? 

Since I don’t write in just one genre, that problem never arises. I only write in the genres that I read, too. For example, I tried reading a romance novel once and couldn’t get past the third page, so I have never even tried to write in that genre.

Would you ever be opposed to turning one of your books into a movie if a studio were to ask you?

Are you kidding? I would love to have not just one, but some of my books turned into movies. That way I could reach an even bigger audience.

Do you mix any commentary about the world into your books, like the state of the world, commentary on capitalism, politics, etc.? 

Not explicitly. I do have a thing about bullying, and many of my books will include a bully who gets his comeuppance, but I never lecture; I just show the bullying, show people getting tired of it and how they deal with it. I figure that people who hate bullies as much as I do will get the message and any bullies who accidentally happen to pick up that particular book will pretty quickly stop reading.  I do try to show a diversity in characters—gender, ethnicity, and the like—and show how a wide variety of people have played a part in history, but again I never preach or lecture. I try to be historically accurate, but do not let that stand in the way of telling a good story. As an example, I once wrote a story about a ten-year-old and his family moving west. It wasn’t a bestseller but did enjoy modest sales. One reviewer, though, hated it because she didn’t think a ten-year-old could do some of the things I had my main character doing. The problem with her thinking was she was basing it on what kids can do today, rather than a time when you had to take on adult responsibilities early in life.

 
If you were to leave any of your novels open-ended, do you like hearing fan feedback on what they think either the ending means or what happened after the ending? Or would you prefer they just take the story as it is?

Other than leaving teasers at the end of the mysteries, and now the horror novels, I don’t really leave stories open-ended. Having said that, I have no objections to a fan giving me ideas for what happens next. I once did a short story based on a prompt and posted it on a short story site. A few readers expressed dismay that I had killed my main character at the end of the story and one pleaded with me to figure a way to resurrect him. As it turned out, I had ended the story with a shotgun blast through a door behind which the character was standing, so it was an easy matter to have the door absorb most of the pellets and him just getting a few just under the skin. Painful but not fatal. That resulted in a series of ten short stories that were the most widely read on that site until it went out of business. I don’t do too many short stories anymore, except for the occasional anthology. They’re much harder to write than a novel, but when it’s done right can be quite satisfying.

What’s next for you? Do you have a new book in the works or any other projects you’d like people to know of and get excited about?

I plan to do a few more Western horrors, have, in fact, already written a second—different character and plot—and I’m concentrating on my two most popular characters for a while. I wrapped up two series, at least for a while. Last year I did a mystery with a new private detective, a young version of a long-running series and a kind of follow-on that served to wrap up the original series. I’m toying with the idea of doing a few more with this new character and seeing where it goes. Other than that, for the next year at least, I will be focusing on expanding my popular characters.

I would like to thank Charles for taking the time to conduct this interview. We greatly appreciate the time taken out of his busy schedule talk with us and we hope that this was an interesting look into one of our many esteemed authors. Thank you for reading, and thank you again, Charles, for doing this interview. 

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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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Description in your fiction – let your readers use their imagination

When I’m reading fiction, and I come to a passage of description where the author goes into excruciating (to me) detail; describing every wrinkle in the fabric of a shirt, or every knot hole in a tree; I skip it. If I encounter a second such passage, I skip it. The third time, unless I’m reading the greatest story ever told (and, I’m still waiting to encounter that story), I stop reading. Long, overly-detailed passages of description, whether of character, setting, or . . . well, just about anything, stop the flow of the story, and leave you suspended in a kind of nether world outside the story, and for me, this is a complete buzz kill. I suspect that’s so for most readers.

Because I don’t like too much description, when I write, I try to avoid it as much as possible. This is not to say that there is no description in my stories—a certain amount is needed to set the scene for a reader. But, if you’re smart, you will allow the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the details, which, in turn, pulls them deeper into the story.

Here’s an example. A character enters a house late at night. You wish to show that danger lurks in the shadows in every room. Following the principle of ‘show, not tell,’ you do not say ‘danger lurks in every room,’ but nor should you go overboard in trying to show that the character is entering a dangerous place. So, how, in a case like this, do you engage the reader’s imagination?

Let’s try something like this:

            “The door made a soft moaning sound as he eased it open. He stepped into the room, and the darkness seemed to reach out and grasp him by the throat, and press against his chest. The dust in the air felt like spiders crawling across his skin.”

Okay, let’s stop the description right there, and have our character do something, preferable something that evokes a sense of impending peril. If you like, you can insert short phrases later on to reinforce the sense of danger, just to keep the reader on his or her toes. Get the point? Did you get a few mental images of what lay ahead for this character? That’s how to do it.

Same thing goes for character descriptions. You don’t have to list every wart or wrinkle on a character. Paint it in broad strokes and let the reader fill in the rest, especially for supporting characters. I have a recurring character in my Al Pennyback mysteries, for example; Mom, the proprietor of the hero’s favorite restaurant. She’s known only as Mom, but some reader feedback tells me that some people think they know her. Here’s how I described her in one book in the series:  “Mom sat at her usual place at the end of the counter, near the cash register, looking out over her domain like some ancient Ethiopian queen. She wore a bright yellow, one-piece dress that, despite containing enough fabric to make a roomy two-man tent, barely contained her girth.”  Can you see Mom?  Bet you can.

That’s it for now. Keep writing.

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The Schizophrenic Writing Life

The writer

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.

Frontier Justice 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 The writerthought 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?

 

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