writing

July 30, 2013

For Not Much Longer: Free Ebooks!

You’ve got a few hours left to take action…

Until the end of July, 2013, you can download free and discounted ebooks from Smashwords, an indie publishing distribution site. I hope you will start with mine!

Get free ebook versions of my novels  Scar Jewelry or C.R.I.M.E. Science. 

Here’s how:  click on the title, which will take you to each book’s  page at Smashwords, where you will find downloads that work with every common e-reader. Use the code SW100 to get each free book.

If you are an especially cautious individual, you may first want to read free excerpts, available under the Novels menu on this blog.

This giveaway is part of the annual Summer Promotion at Smashwords.

And – remember to write a review! Readers’ reviews are incredibly important to indie authors.

Brief descriptions of each book follow.

Cover for Scar Jewelry

Cover art by Lars Huston.

Scar Jewelry

What do we really know about our parents or the ways they shape us? For twins Deirdre and Langston, 20, the answer is: not enough. With their father long dead, and their mother now in a coma, they realize they don’t even know whom to notify. In fact, they understand almost nothing about their mother. They delve into her life and uncover secrets that revise the past and transform the future.

====================

CRIMESCIENCE_cover

Cover art by Lars Huston.

C.R.I.M.E. Science

A misfit group of scientists and tech whizzes form a detective agency in order to solve crimes and right wrongs. In this, the first book of a series, they investigate the death of a renowned volcano scientist. He dies in a volcanic eruption in what everyone considers a terrible accident. Everyone except his widow, who insists he was murdered.

 

July 12, 2013

Pssst! Free Ebooks!

Until the end of July, 2013, you can download free and discounted ebooks from Smashwords, an indie publishing distribution site. I hope you will start with mine!

Get free ebook versions of my novels  Scar Jewelry or C.R.I.M.E. Science. 

Here’s how:  click on the title, which will take you to each book’s  page at Smashwords, where you will find downloads that work with every common e-reader. Use the code SW100 to get each free book.

If you are an especially cautious individual, you may first want to read free excerpts, available under the Novels menu on this blog.

This giveaway is part of the annual Summer Promotion at Smashwords.

Please help spread the word about this giveaway.

And – remember to write a review! Readers’ reviews are incredibly important to indie authors.

Brief descriptions of each book follow.

Cover for Scar Jewelry

Cover art by Lars Huston.

Scar Jewelry

What do we really know about our parents or the ways they shape us? For twins Deirdre and Langston, 20, the answer is: not enough. With their father long dead, and their mother now in a coma, they realize they don’t even know whom to notify. In fact, they understand almost nothing about their mother. They delve into her life and uncover secrets that revise the past and transform the future.

====================

CRIMESCIENCE_cover

Cover art by Lars Huston.

C.R.I.M.E. Science

A misfit group of scientists and tech whizzes form a detective agency in order to solve crimes and right wrongs. In this, the first book of a series, they investigate the death of a renowned volcano scientist. He dies in a volcanic eruption in what everyone considers a terrible accident. Everyone except his widow, who insists he was murdered.

 

July 11, 2013

Tapping My Inner Hermit

The view from my cave.

The current internal view from my cave.

I have always liked being alone, and I am good at it. The one aspect of being a parent that was tough on me was all those years with so little alone time. These last few weeks, recuperating from surgery, with nowhere to go and nothing required of me except laying around, I have had more alone time than I have had in decades. I went through a bad patch at the start of the second week – OMG this is interminable –  but then I settled in. I’m reading a lot, writing a lot, and just — hanging out: petting the cats, patting the dog, pondering the hummingbirds in the garden, walking at sunrise and sunset. Now it’s jarring when the phone rings or a text arrives or a friend visits, as I spiral ever deeper into solitude.

Somehow I’ve managed to avoid most of my usual worrying and planning, which has allowed me to feel downright peaceful. I probably have to credit post-op lassitude for much of this accomplishment (and initially, heavy meds), although I have occasionally practiced some of the techniques I’ve recently learned at Al-Anon.

Having no required thoughts or agenda has been fertile as well as productive for my new novel. The ideas are flowing from all directions, at all times. I’d forgotten what that was like!

All in all, my post-op phase has been the ultimate in staycations. Tune in next week, when I phase back into work, set the alarm clock, and resume driving, to see how long the peace lasts.

Image courtesy of …

July 8, 2013

DIY Writing Career

The latest Weekly Photo Challenge focuses on nostalgia and these photos conjure nostalgia in so many ways!

Fake fur chair by a Los Angeles designer named Harry. Back in those days, I worked in Hollywood and supported only me, so I had money for such things.

My writing room. Tile floor by me. Fake fur chair by Los Angeles designer Harry Segil. Back in those days, I worked in Hollywood and supported only me, so I had money for snazzy chairs.

In these photos is a tile floor I laid myself. Laying the floor took a long time, but not nearly so long as coming up with a design I liked. When I did the floor, I listened over and over to two record albums by my favorite band  the Replacements: Tim, which had just come out, and Let It Be.  There is still a bit of grout on the LP labels.

This was the room where I did my writing, and I wanted it to be special. I furnished it during the first of the mid-century revivals. I loved writing in that room. It was here that I wrote my psychological thriller about split brain research*,  ?Was It A Rat I Saw?, under contract to Bantam-Doubleday-Dell. BDD gave me an advance to write ?Rat?, so for a year, my only job was writing. Bliss!

I published ?Rat? then I stopped writing novels for a long time, until I resumed with Scar Jewelry, my novel about family and music, which I wrote on weekend mornings in between everything else. I had forgotten how great it is to have writing as my only work, until the last couple weeks:  I am laid up convalescing after hip replacement surgery and am getting a ton of writing done. More bliss! In fact, I expect to complete a first draft of my new fantasy detective novel, Frames, before I have to return to the d-a-y  j-o-b.

I am writing Frames on my iPad, as I recently posted. I wrote ?Rat? on a technology of equal or surpassing greatness, the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter. Kids, you had to be there to appreciate it.

More of my tile floor, and the world's greatest writing machine: the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter.

More of my tile floor, and the world’s greatest writing machine: the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter.

P.S. Contrary to what this image shows, the desk did stand plumb with the floor. I “digitized” these old prints by photographing them with my phone and that introduced the skew.

*P.P.S. Another post-op project has been to convert ?Was It A Rat I Saw? to an e-book. That new edition should be available in 4-6 weeks.

P.P.P.S. Harry still makes amazing furniture, worth an oogle regardless of your price range.

July 4, 2013

My Writing Companion

With much enthusiasm – and no shame – I contribute to the Weekly Photo Challenge using my worst photos ever. This week’s topic is companions, and despite the lack of viable photos I have to do a shout-out to my beloved writing companion, my iPad. I recently wrote my novel Scar Jewelry on my iPad, and now am close to finishing a first draft of my fantasy detective novel Frames.

With my iPad I write on my patio on a balmy sunny night. With my iPad I carry my words and ideas around just about all the time, keeping them in the glove compartment in case I get a spare moment to write. And with my iPad I can slip over to play a few games and think things through subconsciously when my writing gets stuck.

Below are my writing apps in action. I wasn’t sure that screen shots should count as photos so I snapped these photos with my phone. Hence the unforgettable quality.

Early version of my latest novel, as planned out using presentation slides instead of notecards.

Early version of my latest novel, as planned out using Keynote’s presentation slides instead of notecards.

I organize and reorganize elements in a scene using the mindmap software Poppplet.

I organize and reorganize elements in a scene using the mind-map app Poppplet.

The writing itself I do with Pages.

The writing itself I do with Pages.

June 22, 2013

Writing Every Day

Writing can be a bicycle made of lead. It’s much easier to stop than to start.

I’ve got two quotes that help propel me forward again after I stall out.

One is by the scientist and activist Linus Pauling, who won two Nobel prizes  (chemistry; peace):

The way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

The other is by musician, song-writer, and record producer Nick Lowe, who had this motto in the recording studio at Stiff Records:

Bash it out now, tart it up later.

Finally, this comment by jazz great Thelonious Monk to a newer musician gives me courage to try something different:

You are making the wrong mistakes.

June 17, 2013

An End to Needless Worry

(Today’s  Daily Prompt says: write a letter to your least favorite trait.)

Dear Anticipatory Hysteria,

We’ve been together so many years and we will both have to adjust to life apart. But there is no question – it is time for you to go. I remember when you first came around. I was a teenager and noticed that nothing I ever thought would happen, did happen. So I began to imagine terrible things, because if I thought of them then they wouldn’t happen – a mental talisman. But the strategy never really helped. The terrible imaginings didn’t prepare me for other bad things that happened instead. Rather, they cost me so much time, energy and peace of mind — and kept me absorbed in misery that never materialized.

My new strategy is to note that I will have plenty of time to feel bad about something after it actually happens, and in the meantime I will do my best to keep my thoughts in the present tense, and to focus on all the positives, including the fragrance of the jasmine and the sounds of birds greeting the morning, as I write this on my front patio.

From now on I will save my apocalyptic imagination for my novels. There it serves me very well and has proved invaluable as I write my fantasy detective series.

P.S. Wherever you go next, please make room for your parents, Worry and Anxiety. Their eviction is in the works now.

June 16, 2013

All Mod Cons

Elmore Leonard published the novel Pagan Babies back in 2000 but I just read it this week. It is an Elmore Leonard book, therefore the plot is full of cons and double crosses, the dialog is witty, the prose is terse, and the characters are gritty and lively – oddball yet believable.  In this book, Father Terry  leaves Detroit half a step ahead of the law to become a rural priest in Rwanda during the recent genocide. During his first mass, some forty souls are slaughtered in front of him where they have sought sanctuary. After five years, Dunn returns to Detroit and gets caught up in the schemes of local mobsters and with Debbie, an aspiring stand-up comic who just got out of prison for hitting her ex-boyfriend with her car. The ex-boyfriend conned her out of $67 grand and she hatches a succession of schemes to get payback.

On LibraryThing and Goodreads I gave this book 4 stars. It probably only merits 3 stars. Consider the fourth a gratitude star. I can always depend on a Leonard novel to be worth reading.

I really needed a good read after having just forced my way through Quinn by Iris Johansen. My first and last Johansen. The writing was  flabby and weak. All the dialogue sounded just like the narration and I hated the narration. The characters were romance novel cliches crowbarred into a thriller format. And the plot. Oy, the plot. Sensual, fragile yet tough forensic artist Eve quests for decades to find out what happened to her missing daughter, aided by hunky FBI man and former Navy Seal Quinn. One suspect is her hunky ex-lover, former Army Ranger and father of the missing girl, who doesn’t know whether he killed the girl or not because sometimes his brain short-circuits thanks to torture by North Koreans. But he must be innocent because the daughter’s ghost appears to him as well as Quinn and Eve. Aaaaaaaaaaaa. I can’t say why I wasted the time to finish this (I skimmed the second half) except I knew it was a best seller and wanted to see why. I found no explanation. To restore my faith in book buyers, I tell myself that the other two books in this trilogy must be way better. You won’t get me to test that theory.

Johansen fans – I regret if I have offended you. Looking for a positive – we will never compete for her library books!

(This post comes from this Daily Prompt.)

June 9, 2013

The Daily Prompt: The Normal – Pack Response

images

Do wolves get bored? Read on to find out.

I’m not much interested in normal. To me, normal is

  • average
  • typical
  • commonplace
  • predictable
  • unimaginative.

However, normal is also

  • fitting in.

On dark days, I feel like everybody else knows the rules but nobody thought to let me know. Even then, though, I don’t want to go normal, I just want to be better informed.

This reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of writing – ever! – composed by my sister in 2nd grade:

One day the wolf was strolling along with the pack
I am not satisfied he said will I have to run around with this pack all my life
So he left he came to a forest he got to a desert
He lay down in the middle he was dying of thirst
Oh he thought if only I had stayed

(This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.)

June 7, 2013

The Lost(?) Art of Editing

I write this at risk of proving myself  to be a total creaking dinosaur.

Those of you who read or produce serial fiction, impromptu flash fiction, NaNoWriMo, book series that publish at the rate of a novel every month or two — and any other writing that  publishes right after inception. Please help me understand its appeal.

As a writer, I see much value to it. Writing quickly helps with flow, tapping the subconscious, and discipline. But — why publish without much or any editing? Doesn’t a pause to edit always improve the piece? (By editing I mean more than proof-reading and tinkering. I mean the act of making changes, some of them wholesale and sweeping.)

As a reader, I don’t want to read an early draft and I only want unplanned ideas when they come from inspiration, not haste.  I like writing that feels crafted. What am I missing?

Hmm. I don’t mind reading a first draft blog post and for that matter I rarely do more than proofread my own posts.  Maybe I’ve just got fiction on a pedestal when nobody else still does. Is that it?