writer

Titles for my latest Dangerous Journey novel.

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Over the last few months, I’ve worked on the 4th book in my Dangerous Journeys series. The title? None as yet.

Anne McPhail, doctor and genealogist vacationing in the Spanish village of Setenil, risks her life to save a child. An arms cartel kidnapped Naomi to pressure her grandfather, an Israeli cabinet minister, into voting to extend the settlements. The cartel’s goal: to foment war and increase the sales of its arms to both sides.
The story begins 16 days before the vote and 18 days until Anne leaves Spain.

Titles

1.The Child in the Plaza
2.Running
3.The Ransom
4.The Child on the Terrace
5.Naomi’s Donkey
6.Saving Naomi
7.Journey with Naomi
8.Rescuing Naomi
9.18 Days
10.Eighteen Days
11.Sixteen Days to the Vote
12.Sixteen Days
13.A Child as Pawn
14.The Red-haired Girl
15.Race to Italy

16.Abduction from Spain
17.Abduction from Setenil
18.The Spanish Rescue

Which title would you prefer? You can vote below.

Stone Patrick author interview

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What inspired you to write your first book?
I initially thought of writing as a way to make money, and lots of it, but as I did more research, I read time and time again that most writers will never be able to support themselves with their writing alone. That was a sobering thought, but I didn’t want that to stop me from at least trying. I continued to read books about how to write — I bought at least 20-25 books, some of which I have read multiple times — and when I tried it for myself, I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I wrote something that moved people emotionally. It’s that acclamation from other people that motivates me to continue writing.
Do you have a specific writing style?
Yes, I try to write simple sentences, changing the structure to make it easy to follow, and I don’t use big words that most people won’t know the meaning of. I like to think that my dialogue is full of conflict and reflects the characters’ traits and biases. When I write, I try not to create word combinations that would sound foreign if they were spoken out loud. I believe my style of writing is conversational and smooth, and that it conjures up images in the reader’s mind that are specific to that individual, instead of being so descriptive that there is only one possible image that can be thought of.
How did you come up with the title?
In coming up with the title, I wanted something simple that would be easy to say, not easily misunderstood, and was based on the crime that needed to be solved. It started out as a working title, and by the time the book was completed, I couldn’t think of anything else that personified both the crime and the one responsible for what happened.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
The book starts out focusing on the death of Neil Baines, and how a small-town lawyer, Taylour Dixxon, found herself defending his wife, who is the one accused of perpetrating the crime. I chose a small-town lawyer because I wanted to highlight the challenges that these sole practitioners face, day in and day out, as they try to practice law outside of the big city. The message that I want the reader to come away with is that the job of a lawyer, especially in a small town, is vitally important to the sustainability of order in society. It can sometimes be a thankless job, but in the end, Taylour knows that this is where she belongs.
How much of the book is realistic?
I took bits and pieces of places and buildings that I know and made a fictitious town of Marlinsville, TX. Some of the pieces were patterned after where I live, with certain names of restaurants and streets and festivals that are similar, and I chose a central county in Texas (Falls) and the county seat (Marlin) for the actual spot on the map, but the description of the town itself is made up and has no similarities to the actual town of Marlin, TX.
Are the experiences in the book based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
Not at all. I did reach out to a small town attorney named J. Burton Hunter, III who helped me with some of the legal questions that I had, but the characters and experiences are not based on any actual events.
What books have most influenced your life the most?
The books that have influenced me the most are the scriptures of my church, including the Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon, as well as the books that I have read of several mystery authors, John Grisham, Dick Francis, Jeffrey Archer, just to name a few.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
My biggest challenge is finding the time to do everything that I need to do with the limited resources that I have. Between writing, spending time with my family, working my day job, fulfilling my church responsibilities, marketing my book, and a thousand other things, I never seem to have enough time to do everything that I want. I am not good at prioritizing my time, and I do like to watch certain TV shows that I can’t seem to give up.
What was the hardest part of writing your book?
The hardest part was trying to tie everything together. I wanted to use most of what I wrote, but some of the scenes didn’t always fit, so I either had to adapt the scene or cut it all together if it didn’t move the story along. Also, there were times when I was simply too exhausted to type any further, but I needed to complete the scene so that I wasn’t falling behind schedule. I had to push through that more than once.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
Write what you know, and don’t be afraid to create characters that have flaws. No one likes a perfect protagonist or someone who is always happy. Inject humor when possible, but don’t overdo it. Decide early on if you want to write for the sheer joy of writing, or if you want an audience. If you want to write for an audience, then know who that audience is and write as much as you can.

Also, you need to read about the art of writing! Study and see examples of different points of view, learn how to develop plot and characters, and understand the underlying structure of a great story.

And finally, tell everyone that you are writing a book because 1) people think it’s cool that you are a future author, 2) it will motivate you to keep writing when your friends and family constantly ask about your book, and 3) it will help you to sell more books because you are creating buzz, and buzz sells.

This interview first appeared on Smashwords.

Debut Suspense Novel from Stone Patrick

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Stone Patrick’s debut novel, The Fallen Body, takes us to the heartland of Texas, to the fictional small town of Marlinsville, and young lawyer Taylour Dixxon. She focuses her practice on civil law but yearns for the big case. No one tells her to be careful what she wishes for.

One day, she meets Sarah Baines, a woman from New Jersey, befriends her and invites her to dinner. This is Taylour’s last peaceful moment for many weeks. The Texas Rangers burst in and arrest Sarah for the murder of her husband.

Taylour takes the case and before the murder is solved, finds herself saddled with a charming nephew, Spencer, almost loses her home and her life at the hands of the Russian mobster, Roman Danshov, and falls in love with Texas Ranger Philip Davidson. A wild ride, to be sure.

 

I enjoyed this densely-plotted debut novel, with its varied cast of characters.

Taylour, a feisty young woman at the beginning of her career, struggling with aggressive clients, and a Texas Ranger who distracts her from her work, deserves another outing. I hope Patrick has something more planned for her.

Spencer, my favorite 23 year-old going on 17, arrives with a show of adolescent bravado, but grows up during the novel time, and demonstrates his bravery at the conclusion.

Like many debut novels, The Fallen Body would benefit from a professional edit. However, if you enjoy romantic suspense and don’t demand foul language, explicit sex scenes or gratuitous violence, but want a book to keep you turning the pages, try The Fallen Body.

Watch for an interview with Stone Patrick on Wednesday, May 7.

The Fallen Body is available from Smashwords at the following link:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/402747?ref=tayman0522

 

James Scott Bell and the Magical Mirror Moment

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Storytelling has a rhythm, a structure based on centuries of tales recounted wherever people sat together, around a fire, or a table, at a bedside or in a classroom. Three acts, a middle turning point, a crisis and a denouement comprise most. Simple enough, I hear someone say. Not at all.

Countless books on writing have dealt with the structure of novels, and now websites devoted to writing and bloggers eager to help other writers, do the same.

Until my current WIP(work-in-progress), I’d been a pantster, getting on with writing and worrying about structure later. This time, I plotted and outlined and followed my work count, making sure that the ends of the acts fell where they should, that there was a middle turning point, that a hook moment existed, not too far into the first act and so on, and so on. All great, until James Scott Bell wrote Write Your Novel from the Middle, a terrific(and short) book that defines a mirror moment, at the exact middle of the book, in which the protagonist assesses herself, and makes a decision based on her own psychology, what sort of person she is going to be, or assesses the forces against her and the certainty of her death, whether physical, psychological, or professional. From that, the writer develops the pre-psychology and post-psychology. So far so good. Then he writes about the two pillars, or doorways of no return. I was familiar with those. I’d read his excellent book Plot and Structure. So now the novel has three points: a first doorway at about 20% in, the mirror moment and 50% and the final act, again shorter at 20%. Other writers suggest longer first and final acts.

His description of the method is clear and freeing. Writing the mirror moment, the point of realization, means the first half must lead to this moment and the second half lead to the crisis and transformation.

My personal problem with this is that the WIP was more than half done when I read about the mirror moment. It turns out that this is not the problem, but part of the solution. I found my mirror moment, tucked into the middle of the book, where it belonged, and now I’m revising with a surer grasp of where I need to strengthen the plot or make the psychologic pressures clearer.

So yet again, I’m grateful to James Scott Bell, for his concise, entertaining and useful books about writing. I buy them on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/James-Scott-Bell/e/B000APSY8A or at Writers Digest Shops http://www.writersdigestshop.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=james+scott+bell

Disclaimer: No connection whatsoever with James Scott Bell, except that of reader and student.

Writing and reading and more writing

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What with one thing and another, it’s been a while since a new blog appeared in this space. I haven’t been slacking but focussing on three projects.

Revision of A Child for the Taking for the tenth or eleventh time. I’m using AutoCrit to revise this time. The software’s frequency of words feature allows me to rework phrases and sentences, one scene at a time.

Reading Saving Fillide, my work-in-progress up until Christmas. I sent it to my Kindle and reading in book-format allows me to catch and mark errors.

Writing The Spanish Connection(tentative title)  my latest Anne McPhail mystery.

In between I read Will Ferguson’s 419, a brilliant novel until the ending. Although the ending is dramatic and memorable, I didn’t believe it as I had the rest of the novel. The character as I understood her was too clever to make the decisions Ferguson detailed.

Fun reads over this time have been the latest Penny Brannigan mystery set in Wales: Never Laugh As a Hearse Goes By by Elizabeth J. Duncan and a series by Susan Shaber—The Louise Pearlie Mysteries. The latest is Louise’s Dilemma. Great period detail of WWII Washington.  Her Majesty’s Hope , the latest in Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope Mysteries is set in Britain during the same time period.

I’m looking forward to attending Writescape’s Spring Thaw with Ruth Walker and Gwynn Scheltema in April at Elmhirst on Rice Lake: great company, opportunities to learn about the craft and free, uninterrupted time to write.

Thoughts on Rejection

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Should rejection of a piece of writing arrive mere hours after submission, or after months of waiting?

I submitted the same novel to two publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada. The UK publisher is a new enterprise, the Canadian one a press that has been going for years. The UK publisher rejected and notified within a day. I’m still waiting for the Canadian publisher. It’s been 79 days.

I think a month or three of waiting is preferable to a rejection by return e-mail. The latter suggests to me that only the query letter has been read and perhaps not all of that. I purchased a query letter assessment from Writers Digest and the doctored version is the one I send.

Noah Lukeman, in The First Five Pages, states  that agents and editors are looking for reasons to reject, beginning with the presentation and will only read those first five pages. If they can’t find anything there, they will move on to page 99 or read other random selections.

His book details the reasons for rejection and proposes solutions. Each chapter ends with exercises to address the problems.

So what should I do?

Take the first chapter to my critique group? Done.

Ask writing teachers to assess it? Done.

Revise and rewrite? Done.

Ask a beta-reader’s opinion? Done.

I’ve considered posting the first chapter online at Wattpad and inviting comments, but hesitate because some publishers won’t look at anything that has been published in part by others, even oneself.

Should I decide that the manuscript belongs in a drawer? Perhaps, but not yet. I have a few weeks until I want to start serious revision of my work-in-progress, and I think that I will spend them revising A Child for the Taking. Noah Lukeman’s book will be my guide this time.

Rainy Sunday Morning

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This week the peonies burst open, gorgeous Festiva Maxima, white with a hint of pink in its throat, Duchesse de Nemours , deep cream at the centre of white petals, and others, deep pink, that I planted so long ago I’ve forgotten their names. The new ones are still hiding their colour although one has a hint of the promised yellow. I planted a Japanese tree peony two years ago. As I write its candy-pink blossoms are folded in waiting for the sun to encourage them to spread their petals.
Today the peony rains have come, but not so heavily as to shatter the blossoms and smash them to the ground. Ah, even if they are broken, they are worth the heartache of their early loss for the beauty and the scent that perfumes the entire garden.

The OAC application is on its way. Of course I thought, almost at once, of an alternative beginning and a fresh point of view. Too late.

At the last Writescape Writers retreat I attended and again at the Ontario Writer’s Conference, I listened to lectures about archetypes in fiction. I’ve been looking for more information as I had questions. When did one consider archetypes: at the onset of writing, when the book was in first draft, at the end when all would be clear? The books that I have talk about the subject but not enough to satisfy my curiosity so I turned to the internet and the blogosphere.
More confusion ensued. Are there five or twenty-five or a cast of thousands. Some writers seemed to be confusing archetype with stereotype. As I understand it(so far) archetypal characters are found in all eras, across all cultures and express why a character behaves the way he does.
This site is a list of other sites that deal with archetypes, symbols, motifs, etc.
http://freepdfdb.org/doc/archetypes-in-literature-list

Jordan McCollom’s site has a basic description of archetypes and a download of interesting articles on Plotting. Find it here: http://jordanmccollum.com/2009/10/archetypal-characters-heros-journey/

There are many more, hundreds more, sites and essays and university course materials that deal with the subject. And there are always Jung and Northrop Frye to consult.

I’m at the end of writing the first draft of my current work in progress. It will be an interesting and useful exercise, I think, to review my characters with archetypes in mind) as well as symbols, motifs, etc. I see opportunity to strengthen the characters in their various roles, bearing in mind that the characters, like the rest of us, are complex and contradictory and not content to stay where i have slotted them.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

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The deadline for the Ontario Arts Council works-in-progress awards is June 17th. My prose selection is finished, read by knowledgable people— an art director and a writer, both of whom gave generously  of their time and expertise— and the final polishing done. The application allows for up to two pages of supplemental material, synopses, table of contents and so forth, if I choose to include it. I don’t. I doubt a synopsis of an unfinished novel, even one that is complete in first draft would help my case. No, the work must stand on its own.

Now, I’m not the best form-filler in the world. There is something about all those little squares. If the instructions say “mark with an X”, I’m sure to use a checkmark. Indeed, I have to remind myself of that every time I vote.

Even my own address can bring on a sudden episode of panic—what did I print? It may be an old address from Toronto, or the first one here in Lindsay, but not the one the computer—it does know where I live—wants.

“Ah, poor soul,” I hear you say. “Her age is starting to show.” Not at all. I’ve always been this way. I have trouble staying within the signature box on the passport application.

I think it must be some subliminal resistance to the rule-makers.

Speaking of the rule-makers, the ones in Ottawa seem to be in a spot of trouble. Apparently the holier-than-thou Tories aren’t so. According to Margaret Wente in the Globe on Saturday, that’s just how it’s done in the Senate—perks, thousands of dollars of them, all round. http://tinyurl.com/m7pgjsb

I’ve always thought we needed the two houses in Parliament, hoping the Senate would be the source of sober second looks at legislation. I wasn’t all that bothered by the appointed rather than elected basis either, until recently. I do think that, whatever way we decide to choose them, the senators must be more accountable for their actions, their decisions and their budgets. If that means elected, so be it, but let’s look at countries other than the USA as a model. However much our PM admires their system, it’s in worse gridlock than Toronto’s roads.

Australia has a bicameral system. The upper house comprises 76 senators, elected for 6 year terms, 2 from each state and territory. The senators are elected under a proportional representation form of voting.

According to Wikipedia: Unlike most upper houses in parliamentary systems, the Senate is vested with significant power, including the capacity to block legislation initiated by the government in the House of Representatives, making it a distinctive hybrid of British Westminster bicameralism and US-style bicameralism.

New Zealand has a unicameral system. it abolished its Senate in 1950.

What we do need to do is make sure the “hands-in-the-cookie-jar” sense of entitlement goes.

Elora Writers Festival

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On Sunday, May 26, I attended the Elora Writers Festival, an afternoon of readings by six authors, several of them local to Elora-Fergus. One of the readers commented that the day’s readings had taken the audience on a journey from the sexy inhabitants of  Sonia Day’s garden to the streets of Budapest with Ailsa Kay. Andrew Westoll’s The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary  left some of us with hearts broken by the sadness of their fate  while laughing at the hapless author’s first day among them. Mystery writer Robert Rotenberg is  very much a Toronto man. Indeed the city plays as important a role in his books as some of his characters. Carrie Synder took us to war in Nicaragua and Terry Fallis brought us back to Canada and Northern British Columbia.

I spoke and read at two events so far this year and wanted to learn some of the methods other writers used to keep an audience engaged. Of course the methods used were as diverse as the writers themselves: Sonia Day’s funny, erotic reading, Robert Rotenberg’s engagement of his listeners as a sort of cheering section for a candidate for Mayor of Toronto, Terry Fallis’s sharing of his personal experiences in Northern B.C.

Ailsa Kay: Under Budapest http://gooselane.com/books.php?ean=9780864926814

Carrie Snyder: The Juliet Stories http://www.houseofanansi.com/The-Juliet-Stories-P1302.aspx

Robert Rotenberg: Strangle Hold  http://www.robertrotenberg.com

Sonia Day: The Untamed Garden, A Revealing Look At Our Love Affair with Plants http://www.soniaday.com

Andrew Westoll: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary http://www.andrewwestoll.com

Terry Fallis: Up and Down http://terryfallis.com

What did I learn? The audience seemed to respond best to writers who shared parts of their lives as well as their writing.

I’m looking forward to reading Robert Rotenberg’s latest. He inscribed it for me and when I told him I also wrote,  encouraged me to “write every day”.

A fun, interesting afternoon. Don’t miss it in 2014.

Otherwise, we had  a terrific weekend staying with our friends at The Gardeners Cottage. http://gardenerscottage.ca

Books about Writing

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Long ago I took one English course at University. At the time, I was so intent on medicine and my science courses that I failed to take advantage of an opportunity. The teacher was Tom Marshall, Canadian poet. He was working on his MA that year and I think we were one of the first classes he had to teach. What an ordeal that must have been— bored medical students and engineers, most of us.

I remember being terrified most of that first year, felt unprepared and well out of my depth. I produced nothing good enough even for a B. I’d closed my mind to writing.

Now, I’m trying to catch up, to learn what I should have then, and so, I read books about writing.

Sol Stein: On Writing, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York.

I didn’t know his name when I found him on a list of writing teachers. He has written several books including On Writing, How to Grow a Novel, and Sol Stein’s Reference Book for Writers. He worked as an editor and publisher and playwright and successful novelist.

He also has developed a computer programme to teach the writers craft: the new Write Pro.

I haven’t bought the programme, but I have read the books, and tried to use his techniques in my writing. His lessons about revision, what he calls his triage method, focus on plot and character, major areas that always need work. When he does get to the front to back revision, he suggests scene by scene decision. Does it work? If not, out it goes.

Nancy Kress: Characters, Emotion and Viewpoint, Writer’s Digest Books.

I took a brief on-line course at Writer’s Digest some years ago, on character development and recently read the book that accompanied it again. Or rather, am  reading it, because I’m in the process of revision and need to understand characterization more than I do. Nancy Kress taught the course and the characters I developed with her and their conflict form the nucleus of the book that I’m revising.

Theses are just two of the books on my shelf. Useful additions to any writer’s library.