Tag: writing

Posted on

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. 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

10 Things Beginning Writers do that Drive Readers and Editors Crazy

When you’re just starting out as a writer, it’s normal to make mistakes. Some of us are lucky, and we only have a few bloopers in our early manuscripts, while others struggle with loads of glitches. In my early years as a writer, I had more than my fair share.

I recently started doing assessing and proofreading of new manuscript submissions for a small publisher in New Zealand, and reading some of the work of first-time authors has reminded me of the things that one can do wrong when writing. So, for all you new writers out there, struggling to get that first novel in shape for submission to a publisher, or for indie publishing, following are the ten most frequently encountered, and most irritable problems I find in the work of beginning writers. They’re not in any particular order, such as frequency, seriousness, or degree of irritability, but I suppose that since I found them in this order in my notes from three recent jobs says something about the frequency with which they occur.  I hope you’ll find this useful as you prepare your own magnum opus.

  1. Too many characters. Life is full of people, but when you people your novel with too many named and identified characters it creates confusion. The reader is often left wondering who from the expansive list of characters is important, and who is just a walk-on, like ‘the security guard’ in the credits at the end of a film. It’s a good practice, in fact, to use this cinematic technique for characters who are included basically for filler to show that your imaginary world is populated. Another thing that crops up from time to time when there are too many characters is that some will have similar names, further adding to the confusion.
  2. Inconsistency in identifying characters. Have you ever read a story where a character was ‘Jonathan’ at the first introduction, but became ‘Mr. Jacobs,’ or ‘Jon’ later I the book? Not only have I found this, but in one manuscript I read, the main character was identified with three different names on the same page. My advice here; pick a name (for the narrative, because different other characters might refer to him or her by different names—although, I recommend even keeping this to a minimum) for your characters, and use it consistently throughout your manuscript.
  3. Too much detail. In most cases this is data dumping. The author has to tell us everything there is to know about every character, object, or place in the story. Don’t do it! When I’m reading for pleasure, and encounter this, I stop reading, and I’m pretty sure most readers do the same. As an editor, I’m often forced to endure it just to be able to evaluate the entire manuscript, but I can assure you that it does not endear me to that writer.
  4. Too much information. This is data dumping. In this case, the author has turned up tons of information about whatever, and feels compelled to share it with readers. Like overly detailed descriptions, please restrain yourself. This interrupts the flow of the story, and will turn the reader off, who is very likely to stop turning pages.
  5. Misuse of a thesaurus. Before you scream, pull out your hair, and stop reading, let me say that I basically have nothing against use of a thesaurus to improve and expand your vocabulary. As a matter of fact, on occasion, I will use it to find a word that better expresses the intent of a sentence than the one that first came to me. What some writers do, especially beginning writers, is use the thesaurus to change ‘common’ words to more ‘sophisticated’ ones in the mistaken belief that this makes their writing more ‘sophisticated.’ Their writing is peppered with pompous, grandiloquent terms that make it sound fake. Purple pose of the ilk, ‘He descended the stairs with magnificent importunity,’ instead of ‘he ran quickly down the stairs,’ will not impress most readers. Use the thesaurus sparingly, or even better, stop using it for a while.
  6. Head hopping. Have you ever read a story in which two or more characters are in a scene and you can never tell from which characters’ point of view the story is being told because the writer moves from one’s viewpoint to another? This is called head hopping. In fiction, you want your readers to identify with your character, preferably your main character, and get into your story. When you move from the thoughts or feelings of one character to another within the same scene, you evict the reader from the story in a state of confusion. Advice here: stick to one character’s viewpoint within a scene—actually, I prefer to give each character his or her own chapter—and have a clear demarcation when you wish to switch to another character. I’ve read manuscripts where the writer moved through the heads of three different characters on the same page, and in one really egregious case, between two characters in the same paragraph. Some writers do this and try to cover it by saying they’re writing in third person omniscient. But they use the character’s voices when they do it, rather than the omniscient god/narrator, knocking the pins from under that alibi right away.
  7. Verb aspect shifts. Some writers make changes in aspect without being aware of the subtle difference in meaning this can cause. For example, in unmotivated shifts between the simple past and past perfective forms of verbs, such as ‘I worked as a writer for twenty years,’ as compared to ‘I have worked as a writer for twenty years.’ Do you see the subtle difference in meaning between these two sentences? The first implies that you no longer work as a writer, while the second means that you’re still writing. If that’s what you mean to say, fine, but if the rest of your passage implies that you’re still writing, you will have lost your reader.
  8. Improper verb tense shifts. A problem that I’ve encountered in a number of manuscripts that I’ve reviewed is the tendency of many writers to begin a story or passage in past tense, and suddenly shift to present tense, as in ‘the building was on Sixth Street, the entrance, however, is on Fourth Street.’ This is a trite example, but if you read it carefully, you can see how this can jar a reader. Especially if it happens more than once, as I’ve often encountered. Here’s another example that is in a book I recommend to the participants in my professional writing workshop: ‘Last week I was walking along a street when this man walks up to me and says . . .’. I know that many people speak like this, but in writing it’s considered an error, unless it’s a character speaking.
  9. Noun modifier order. When describing a person, place, or thing and you wish to show more than one trait, it’s important to list them in a logical order. Here’s an example that I encountered in a manuscript: ‘The blond, German, tall man.’ This sounds silly, I know, but I’ve seen this and worse, especially when the writer stacks modifiers, that is, uses three or more nouns to describe an object, person or place. First, it’s a good idea to limit such modifiers, or adjectives, to no more than three, but if you feel it absolutely essential, the following order should be used:
    1. Determiners and post-determiners – articles, numerals and other limiters
    1. Observation/opinion – limiter adjectives such as perfect, interesting, etc.
    1. Size – adjectives depicting physical size (e.g. small, big)
    1. Age – adjectives denoting age (e.g. young, ten-year-old)
    1. Shape – adjectives such as round, swollen, shrunken.
    1. Color – self-evident. (e.g. black, tan, pale)
    1. Origin – source (e.g. German, extraterrestrial)
    1. Material – what something is made of (e.g. wool, metallic)
    1. Qualifier/Purpose – this is a final limiter which sometimes forms a compound noun, such as rocking chair or book cover

      Using the above list, the example sentence would then be correctly written, ‘the tall, blonde, German man.’ This one was easy, and I imagine most of you figured out the correct answer before even reading the list. Keep it in mind, though, as you write, and you can avoid this all too common glitch.

  1. Overuse of similes. This is one that really bugs me, both as an editor and a reader. Similes are a good way to liven up your writing. Take the following examples. She was happy as compared to She was like a cloud on a warm summer day. See the difference? Now, what do you think of the following? She was like a cloud on a warm summer day, flitting like a butterfly from flower to flower, her voice like the babbling of a crystal stream. Okay, I just made that up, but I think you get the picture. Too many similes make your writing seem contrived, and the two comparisons, each fine on its own, are a bit over the top. Curb the compulsion to make so many comparisons, and for heaven’s sake, don’t do it in one sentence.

These are not the only mistakes beginning writers make, but they’re the ones that drive me crazy. As an editor, I spend countless hours annotating them in manuscripts and searching for ways to convince the writer to delete them without bruising an ego or sounding too critical. As a reader, when I encounter them in a book, that book goes into my donation pile.

I hope this bit of advice from someone who has not only suffered them countless times, but who—a confession here—has committed them in my own early writing career, will help you to make your writing a joy to your editors and a source of endless entertainment for your readers.

Posted on

Don’t Let the Quest for Gender Equality Hinder Communication

I’m all for eliminating bias, gender, religious, or ethnic, for our language.

Assuming, for instance, that the pronoun ‘he’ represents both, or all, genders is not only sexist, but it’s illogical. Even though the number of men and women on the planet is almost equal, albeit there are imbalances in some regions (There are, for example, far more women than men in the former Soviet states, and in Asia, the Arab world, and Northern Africa, men outnumber women), in general women outlive men globally. So, if we want to be fair, the common pronoun to refer to all people would be ‘she.’ Of course, we know that life has never been fair.

The war over use of gender-neutral language has been going on for decades, and I’m a total supporter—with a few exceptions.

Some of the made-up words being used make writing sound a bit silly and trivial, to me at least, and they often complicate writing, making it almost incomprehensible. I won’t even go into words like ‘ze,’ ‘hir,’ or ‘s/he,’ or the salacious ‘s/he/it.’ I would, though, like to address one of my pet peeves; the often indiscriminate use of ‘they,’ ‘their,’ or ‘them’ as a singular gender-neutral pronoun.

Now, I acknowledge that this usage has been more or less common practice since the 1800s, and in many cases is correct, and not really a problem. But, when used indiscriminately, they can be quite confusing—and, sometimes sound silly. Take, for instance, the sentence, ‘John put their new address on their Facebook page,’ or ‘The baby threw their bottle at me.’ In the first sentence, upon whose page did John put whose new address? In this case, it’s probably safe to assume John is male, so the use of ‘his,’ doesn’t strike me as biased in any way, and it’s much easier to understand the meaning. In the second, we’re clearly talking about a single baby, and although we don’t know the gender, couldn’t we just write, “The baby threw the bottle at me’? Doesn’t that communicate the same meaning?

The problem with universal use of these words as a substitute for gender-specific pronouns is that if you’re not careful it can lead to miscommunication. Allow me to give you a brief example:

‘The college president released their policy on academic freedom today. They stressed that they want students to be able to express their opinion without fear that they will punish them. They can be assured that they will zealously guard their rights under the US Constitution and the bylaws of their institution.”

I could go on, but I hope I’ve made my point. Is it clear who ‘they’ and ‘their’ are referring to in this passage? Imagine, if you will, if this went on for a thousand more words. I don’t know about you, but I would be completely befuddled.

Maybe I’m a traditionalist, or a coward, or just lazy; or, as some of the students in my professional writing workshop no doubt think; I’m an old codger resisting the inexorable and inevitable transformation of the English language to reflect changes in social consciousness. Actually, I like to think of myself as a practical person who believes that the objective of writing is to clearly communicate a message to an audience. To that end, my approach to the issue of gender neutrality is to eschew blatant and obvious gender-biased language. Policemen become law enforcement officers, and I don’t add ‘-ess’ or ‘ette’ to words to indicate femininity. A waitress is a server, and a stewardess is a flight attendant. I also don’t refer to ‘male nurses,’ or ‘female doctors,’ and a poet is a poet regardless of gender. This applies to my fiction as well as my professional nonfiction writing. If necessary, I’ll rewrite a sentence, eliminating the pronouns if there is no other way. For example, instead of writing, “I took my grandson to the zoo so they could learn about species conservation,’ I’ll write, ‘In order to impart information about species conservation, I took my grandson to the zoo.’

In my professional writing workshop, for Rangel Foreign Affairs Scholars, I have to deal with 15 college seniors each summer, and this is a constant debate. While I appreciate and applaud their commitment to gender equality, my main goal is to help them learn to communicate accurately and effectively in a government setting. I’m careful to emphasize that I understand and support their point of view, and don’t expect or want them to change it. But, at the same time, I urge them to remember why they’re taking the workshop; their goal should be learning how to write effectively and communicate accurately. They are there to learn how to convey an often complex message to a diverse audience. I want them to continue to strive for equality, but to do it without mangling or muddying their message.

I have this depressing feeling sometimes that I’m fighting a losing battle. But, you know what; I will never stop trying.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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?

 

Verified by MonsterInsights