Tuesday Teaser/Opening ~ Equinox

Falconry is one of those topics that I started researching because I wanted to incorporate it into a story I was writing and then kept on reading about it because I found it fascinating. So this week, I'm rereading Equinox: Life, Love, and Birds of Prey by Dan O'Brien which is my favorite book on the topic.


Blurb:
The South Dakota winter gives a man time to think.  The subzero morning, as Dan O'Brien approaches his fiftieth year, the autumnal equinox of his life, he takes stock. Feeling a waning sense of purpose, he decides to devote himself entirely, for the first time in his life, to his greatest loves--falconry, his bird dogs, and the prairie he calls home.

That summer he obtains a remarkable falcon chick who immediately distinguishes herself with her ferocity. He names the bird Harley and trains her in the way of falconry. Harley's powers of flight are awe-inspiring, her hunting success astounding. Like a lover, she  captivates him. O'Brien hunts with her obsessively, reveling in her prowess and beauty. What he learns from her and from what happens one wind-driven day lead him to see fully things he had only just begun to glimpse.

Opening:
We were into the core of a Great Plains winter and weather had driven most of us indoors. My wife, Kris, had been on call at the hospital the night before, so I'd spent the night at the ranch, where we keep the falcons, the dogs, a few horses, and a herd of cattle. In one corner of the old ranch house there is a room filled with books, and that is where I write. I try to get into that room and begin my work early, but that morning I sat in the kitchen sipping coffee, looking out the window, and checking the temperature every few minutes. For days the temperature had been lodged in the single digits below zero, but now, with the sky going a shade lighter, it was already four above.

Teaser:
Falcons can give the impression of just barely missing their quarry. They make it look look they are giving the chase everything they have and that only the quarry's last-minute, heroic maneuver saved its life. Sometimes this is true, but more likely the falcon is just playing

Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/






Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea

Nuggets for March

This is a great post about the cost of self publishing, but what I find really interesting is the pricing philosophy at the end
http://www.chancefortunato.com/zompoc-survivor-blog/the-other-cost-of-self-publishing-or-how-to-do-it-all-wrong-and-still-get-it-right

I sometimes need permission to do things in ways other than what's recommended by "best practices." This post has things to say about content editors that I already suspected, so if you're wondering if you really need a content editor, this is a post you need to read.
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2015/01/17/in-defense-of-editing/

This appeared via Passive Guy a while back, but it's worth reminding everyone that you can widen your audience by working with another writer
https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/how-to-win-sales-and-influence-algorithms/

Jodi Henley has a good post about blurb writing
http://jodihenley.blogspot.com/2015/02/writing-blurbs-and-short-synopsis.html

I came across this post by Chuck Wendig that's thought provoking about what it really means to write strong female characters
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/02/16/how-strong-female-characters-still-end-up-weak-and-powerless-or-do-they-pass-the-action-figure-test/

God forbid any of us ever experiences someone sending a DMCA to Amazon or any of our other retailers, claiming to own the rights to our works, but if it should happen, this site explains succinctly how to file a counter claim.
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/responding-dmca-takedown-notice-targeting-your-content

I recently had a problem with visitors to this site getting redirected to a commercial site. Eventually, I figured out it was the Mailchimp gadget I added causing the problem. I don't understand why or how that would be the case, but it certainly put me off using their services. So if I needed an alternative. Here's what I found. (And if anyone has anything to say about these business, please leave a comment.)
http://blog.capterra.com/top-10-mailchimp-alternatives-small-business-email-marketing/

Thursday Writing Quotes ~ Mickey Spillane

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane

Tuesday Teaser/Opener ~ The Untold Story

The Untold Story: My 20 Years Running the National Enquirer by Iain Calder isn't something I would normally read, but I'm writing a rom-com where the heroine goes to work for a tabloid, so this is research. (One of my favorite things about being a writer is that I get to research so many things.) I've actually read this once already, but I'm about to start rewrites, so I'm reading it again. I did learn all sorts of things about the Enquirer that I didn't know that gave me more respect for them (something they were seriously lacking before I read this.)


The Blurb:
The flashing bulbs of the paparazzi. The iconic names: Liz, Michael Jackson, Jackie O, Jen and Brad. Americans are obsessed with the famous and the beautiful, their lives, loves, break-ups, and breakdowns. From Entertainment Tonight to People, from primetime to the E! channel, our appetite for celebrity news is seemingly insatiable. But in the beginning only the National Enquirer went boldly where other publications feared to tread.

In this no-holds-barred account of the most infamous tabloid in America, Iain Calder, its former editor-in-chief, tells all. Over the course of a career that spanned four decades, Calder brought the lurid newspaper to new heights, dramatically raising circulation by combining his streetwise journalist background with the genius of Enquirer publisher Generoso Pope, Jr.

Calder was born in a small village in Scotland, left school at sixteen, and rose through the ranks of the Glasgow newspapers. His intense work ethic, ruthless tricks to throw competitors off his scent, and nose for a story served him well, and he was tapped to head the Enquirer's London bureau. At that point, the lowly Enquirer was a collection of gory photos of car crashes and murder victims, but Calder corralled the best freelance journalists in Europe and started honing the formula that would transform the tabloid: a unique mix of celebrity scandal, hard-nosed reporting, and feel-good stories. Pope moved him to the American offices of the Enquirer, and the duo transformed the tabloid and, in the process, American journalism.

Calder exposes the stories behind the headlines and the wickedly intrepid Enquirer tactics for getting the scoops. With Calder at the helm, the National Enquirer ran the infamous shot of Gary Hart and Donna Rice and the record-breaking photo of Elvis in his coffin. And it was the New York Times that dubbed the Enquirer "the Bible" of the O.J. Simpson trial after reporters infiltrated O.J.'s inner circle. From the contents of Henry Kissinger's trash and the identity of John Belushi's drug dealer to Princess Grace's tragic death, the Enquirer told us what inquiring minds wanted to know as it took celebrity news from the back pages to the front pages and television screens of mainstream publications and programs.

Calder re-creates the exhilaration of being at the Enquirer during its most extraordinary period and details the way he and his staff broke the biggest exclusives of the day. At its core, The Untold Story is also a love letter from Calder to the glorious tabloid he helped create.

The Opening:
  It was 1964, and life was good.
  I was twenty-four years  old, with almost nine years of journalism under my belt. I'd covered every kind of story from airline crashes and coal-mind disasters to murders and national elections, and now I was a member of the Glasgow Daily Record's Heavy Mob, the reporters sent out on the front lines of the cutthroat Scottish tabloid wars. I was well paid, with work that was exciting and fulfilling. I was engaged to a special woman, Jane Bell, a a hair stylist, who seemed ready to put up with me and the demands of my career.

Teaser:
  We were way ahead of our time covering BDG. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally approved BCG as a cancer-fighter for bladder malignancy, and the "new" treatment got wide press coverage in May 1990--eighteen years after we first reported on it.

Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/






Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea

Hero's Journey Archetypes

Thusday Writing Quote ~ Thomas Edison

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Edison

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Tuesday Teaser ~ Double or Nothing

Double or Nothing by Tom Breiting is a reread for me because it's research for the novel I'm about to start the second draft of. (I like to read widely before I write the first draft and then reread the best resources after the first draft is done to make sure I haven't screwed up the details.) But aside from being research, this is a fun look at what it's like to own a Las Vegas casino.


Blurb:
If Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn had come of age at the end of the 20^th century looking for an all-American adventure, they probably would've headed for Vegas.

They'd have been hard-pressed to go on a wilder ride than the one taken by Tom Breitling and Tim Poster to the top of the famed Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino.

Call them the Odds Couple.

Breitling is the kid who lives next door if you grow up in Burnsville, Minnesota. He never saw a hundred dollar bill or The Godfather until he went to college.

Poster comes from a family of oddsmakers who reach for the Doritos on football Sundays and scream for the point spread. He was whistling Sinatra and booking games at his Las Vegas high school.

Their unlikely friendship began in college over an $8 veal parmigiana sandwich that led to a partnership in a hotel reservation business. Starting with a desk, a chair, a pillow, and a telephone, Tim and Tom grew a company that they sold during the dot.com boom for $105 million. This allows Tim to pursue his childhood dream of owning a casino and bringing back the glory days of Vegas.

When Tim ups the odds and raises the limits to give gamblers the best game in town, a craps player nicknamed "Mr. Royalty," who's on one of the hottest winning streaks in history, heads for The Nugget. When he begins to take Tom and Tim for millions, the partnership is put to the test. But Tim refuses to back off on the odds or the high limits, telling his partner, "It's a ballsy proposition here. It's gonna be a roller coaster ride. But we don't have a public company to answer to. It's just you and me."

When Mr. Royalty rolls twenty-two consecutive passes and rakes in a mountain of chips, he takes Tim and Tom to the brink. They must figure out a way to hold up The House.

Just as they do, the roller coaster ride really gets rolling—and the ride becomes crazier than they'd ever imagined.

Opening:
  "Royalty is coming."
  Well, Johnny D. didn't say it exactly like that. Mr Royalty is what we'll have to call a guy whose real name I can't tell you. The House doesn't reveal the identities of its gamblers. But Mr. Royalty is a good cover. There's plenty of truth and irony in it.
  The truth is Mr. Royalty was able to swagger into The Golden Nugget carrying a pillowcase stuffed with hundred-dollar bills over his shoulder because of the royalties he was making off a line of video games that he'd created. If you're a man between eighteen and forty, you know his games. You've probably played them. One of his games grew so popular, rumor is he sold it outright for $40 million.

Teaser:
A true gambler never goes bust. Everybody else might see him as busted. But he never does. He sees himself as temporarily out of ammunition.

Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/






Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea

Thursday Writing Quote ~ George R R Martin

All fiction, if it’s successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That’s not to say fiction can’t be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level. ~ George R R Martin

Tuesday Teaser/Opening ~ The Unthinkable

Books about the survival of real life disasters are like crack cocaine for me, so The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley is something I'm devouring. So much fascinating information in this.

(For the writers out there, this is also an excellent resource regarding the way people respond to extreme circumstances.)

Blurb:
It lurks in the corner of our imagination, almost beyond our ability to see it: the possibility that a tear in the fabric of life could open up without warning, upending a house, a skyscraper, or a civilization.

Today, nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality–anything we’ve ever learned, thought, or dreamed of–ultimately matter?
  
Amanda Ripley, an award-winning journalist for Time magazine who has covered some of the most devastating disasters of our age, set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation. In this magnificent work of investigative journalism, Ripley retraces the human response to some of history’s epic disasters, from the explosion of the Mont Blanc munitions ship in 1917–one of the biggest explosions before the invention of the atomic bomb–to a plane crash in England in 1985 that mystified investigators for years, to the journeys of the 15,000 people who found their way out of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Then, to understand the science behind the stories, Ripley turns to leading brain scientists, trauma psychologists, and other disaster experts, formal and informal, from a Holocaust survivor who studies heroism to a master gunfighter who learned to overcome the effects of extreme fear.

Finally, Ripley steps into the dark corners of her own imagination, having her brain examined by military researchers and experiencing through realistic simulations what it might be like to survive a plane crash into the ocean or to escape a raging fire.
  
Ripley comes back with precious wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain’s fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain’s ability to do much, much better, with just a little help.

The Unthinkable escorts us into the bleakest regions of our nightmares, flicks on a flashlight, and takes a steady look around. Then it leads us home, smarter and stronger than we were before.

Opening:
  On the morning of December 6, 1917, a bright, windless day, a French freighter called the Mont Blanc began to slowly pull out of the Halifax harbor in Nova Scotia. At the time, Halifax was one of the busiest ports in the British empire. There was a war on in Europe, and the harbor groaned with the churn of ships, men, and weapons. The Mont Blanc was headed for France that day, carrying over twenty-five hundred tons of explosives, including TNT. While passing through a narrow channel in the harbor, a larger ship, the Imo from Belgium, accidentally rammed the bow of the Monte Blanc.
  The collision itself was not catastrophic. The Imo sailed on, in fact. But the crew of the Mont Blanc knew that their ship was a floating time bomb. They tried to put out the fire, but not for very long. Then they scrambled into lifeboats and paddled for shore. For a few heartbreaking moments, the Mont Blanc drifted in the harbor. It brushed up against the pier, setting it on fire. Children gathered to watch the spectacle.
  Many of the worst disasters in history started quite modestly. One accident led to another, until a fault line opened up in a civilization. About twenty minutes after the collision, the Mont Blanc exploded, sending black rain, iron, fire, and wind whipsawing through the city. It was the largest bomb explosion on record. The blast shattered windows sixty miles away. Glass blinded some one thousand people. Next, a tidal wave caused by the explosion swamped the shore. Then fire began to creep across the city. In the harbor, a black column of fire and smoke turned into a hovering white mushroom cloud. Survivors fell to their knees, convinced  that they had seen a German zeppelin in the sky.

Teaser:
The difference* was so marked that Morgan could literally tell whether someone was a member of the Special Forces unit just by looking at their blood results. So then the the question was, which came first? Were Special Forces soldiers just inherently different? Or did their training make them that way?

*Special Forces soldiers produced significantly more "neuropeptide Y," a compound that helps you stay focused under stress.

Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at:: http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com/ 






Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea

Larry Brooks on Writing

Larry Brooks is an author and writing coach. If you haven't read his fiction, take it from me, he knows what he's talking about. Though I don't agree with everything he says (he's a huge proponent of pre-plotting the story), most of what he says is worthwhile.

The book he's talking about here is his novel writing book Story Engineering.

Thursday Writing Quote ~ John Long

Great writing is a mode of transportation ~ John Long

Letting your Characters Talk

My characters always surprise me. That's one of the things that keeps me writing--that joy of discovery.

One of the most productive methods of getting my characters to talk to me has always been letting them talk to each other. It always surprises me what they'll confide to others that they won't tell me directly.

As an example, my heroine Cleo was having a conversation recently with Willa, a woman who had once been a good friend of her mother's. I needed a reason for Willa to have blocked the name of another character (Steve) from her memory, and this is what came out of her mouth:

     “I was engaged once to a guy named Steve. A real rat bastard. Jealous and controlling when he was sober, abusive when he was drunk, which was most of the time.” She looked down, picked up a piece of fish and absently dredged it through the tartar sauce. “Just like my dad, really. I was only nineteen, you know. Too dumb to realize I was on the road to being one of those abused women.”

     Cleo hadn’t known that about Willa. “But you wised up apparently and didn’t marry him.”

    “No, I didn’t marry him, but not because I got smart. He was coming back from a ski trip with his brother. It was late, you know, and the mountain road was slick. His car went over the edge.” She gave them a sardonic smile. “I thought I loved him, but when he died, all I felt was relief. Him dying was the nicest thing he ever did for me.”

     Her attitude struck Cleo as a little hard hearted, but then she’d never been abused. Maybe she didn’t get to judge. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

    “It’s okay. It taught me to really look at people, you know. Before I let them too close. Now I look for kindness and a good heart.”

So what tricks do you use to get your characters talking?