Focusing on the Reader

I don’t know who said it first, but some wise person once said: “Give them what they want and they will come.” In recent months, I have encountered a number of discussions on writer’s forums where some of the authors want to divide up the playground into ‘artist’ and ‘hacks.’

“I want to write quality fiction, rather than just trying to write something that will sell,” some of them have said. This is a noble sentiment, but what is the point of producing a manuscript that will molder in your desk drawer for all time, when you can aim your creative abilities toward a specific audience and sell a respectable number of books. Or more important is this: if you are a real writer, you can strive to do both.

Kindle has changed the craft of writing dramatically. Some critics of ebooks say that the success of this market is because the people who purchase ebooks are programmed to accept less than they will tolerate in a print book. I won’t argue that theory with those who are convinced that it is true, but I feel that the answer lies in another direction. On Amazon Kindle, you can monitor your sales hourly if you are the nail biting type of writer, and see what promotion program is actually working for you, as well as seeing how well your books are received by the average reader. If you work at your craft, you can have a short turnaround time with ebooks, rather than waiting, perhaps for years, to see if you have hit the mark with your writing. I doubt that ebooks are the correct medium for all writers. Print books are not going to die out as some have predicted, for most of us like the feel of a ‘real’ book in our hands. I believe, however, that every writer should try an ebook or two as a way of honing their craft. If you don’t need the extra money, as some have insisted, then send it to me. I have a Paypal account and will put it to good use.

SOUTHERN WRITERS

Stories by Southern writers have always been popular among fiction fans, and I think a lot of the appeal is in the realistic settings that always seem to be present in this type of book. High school and college literature classes would not be complete without a review of William Faulkner, Margaret Mitchell, and Eudora Welty, for each of them brings something to the table that would not be complete without them. While these writers are important, a new generation is continuing to introduce readers to the uniqueness and mystery of the Southern experience. Fannie Flagg, John Grisham, and Willie Morris are among the best Southern writers of our era. Each of them presents a different view of Southern life, exploring the temperament and the feel of the times. If you are already familiar with these writers, let me add another name to your list. In the crime novel, The Quick and the Dead, Milton T. Burton has captured the essence of the Southern criminal. You can feel the tension from the first page to the last, and the sweat and fear of the characters becomes frighteningly real as the tension mounts.

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

MANFRED EUGENE ‘HOG’ WEBERN a retired Dallas County deputy sheriff, is talked into going undercover in Biloxi, Mississippi, in a multistate effort to nail a group of traveling Southern criminals who have been tagged by the press with the lurid name “Dixie Mafia”. After making contact with the gang’s nominal leader, the notorious Jasper Sparks, Webern begins to worm his way into the group’s confidence. He also meets and becomes involved with an old friend of Sparks, the mysterious Neil Bigelow, a former assistant federal prosecutor whose daddy ‘owns half of the Delta.’

Having gained the gang’s trust, Webern soon learns that the score being planned is the massive robbery of a wintering carnival of an entire year’s receipts. Joining in planning the job, he meets such well-known hijackers as Slops Moline, a Charleston, South Carolina, killer and armed robber; Lardass Collins, the country’s premier car thief; Tom-Tom Reed, one of the world’s most skilled safecrackers; and the infamous Raymond “Hardhead” Weiler, and Alabama-born moonshiner who has pulled off more than two dozen high-profile contract killings in his seventy years.

As the story develops, Webern is drawn into a maelstrom of robbery, mayhem, and senseless violence that threatens to engulf his very being. And before the final curtain falls on The Sweet and the Dead, we learn that in the murky world of Southern professional crime, nothing is ever quite what it seems to be.

As technology continues to advance, most Americans are becoming increasingly concerned over their privacy. Banks and financial institutions send out notices concerning the amount of information they are sharing with other organizations. The wording on these notices attempts to soothe us into accepting their claim that they would do nothing to invade our privacy, when in fact they are releasing information that is anything but innocuous.

Few people are aware of how many ways companies and private individuals can invade their privacy. If you have been on the Internet for a long period of time, various sources will have accumulated a vast amount of information about you, and it doesn’t take a hacker to gain possession of this information. None of us intend to lay bare every tiny detail of our existence, but we do, a crumb at a time in emails to our friends or things we post on forums. None of it ever goes away and will be there for employers searching you out after you put in your résumé.

Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room for my first visit, I noticed the young woman at the reception desk was spending a long time at her computer. Thirty minutes later when I talked to the doctor’s nurse, she asked me some questions that she could only have known from an Internet search. Nothing alarming, but enough to make me aware of the ease in which people can find that elusive piece of information they are seeking.

Government law enforcement agencies can locate you anywhere if you are carrying a cellular phone by pinging your phone and triangulating the response through three different towers. Congress is demanding answers concerning a piece of software installed on iPad. It is alleged to contain an application that will track and record your every movement. It will only be a matter of days until hackers will be able to access this from their phone and track where you have been at any moment of the day or night. To me that is a little scary. The stalkers are, no doubt, waiting in line for access to this new application. Click on the title to this article and it will carry you to an article on the investigation by certain congressional members.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110421/tc_afp/usbritainitprivacytelecomcongressinternetapple

The Royal Visit of William and Kate

The marriage of William and Kate is one of the most interesting events to come along in a long while. The royal family was long overdue for a fresh breath of air in the person of Kate. There was a lot of hope when William and Harry grew up and demonstrated that they were not stamped from the same mold as the rest of that stodgy bunch. Harry seems to view the world with a sense of amusement, while William, is the more serious one. Perhaps Kate can produce a royal heir and inject even more of the real world into the British Royal Family. I received an extra boost of enthusiasm when some reporter noticed that Kat was doing the same thing that the rest of us do when on vacation. She wore the same pair of skinny jeans for the third day. Perhaps the reporter who reported that was observing her a little more carefully than he should have, but Kate has the ability to draw our attention. Rule Britannia! Is it too late for America to get back into the commonwealth?

Who Is Watching You?

As technology continues to advance, most Americans are becoming increasingly concerned over their privacy. Banks and financial institutions send out notices concerning the amount of information they are sharing with other organizations. The wording on these notices attempts to soothe us into accepting their claim that they would do nothing to invade our privacy, when in fact they are releasing information that is anything but innocuous.

Few people are aware of how many ways companies and private individuals can invade their privacy. If you have been on the Internet for a long period of time, various sources will have accumulated a vast amount of information about you, and it doesn’t take a hacker to gain possession of this information. None of us intend to lay bare every tiny detail of our existence, but we do, a crumb at a time in emails to our friends or things we post on forums. None of it ever goes away and will be there for employers searching you out after you put in your résumé.

Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room for my first visit, I noticed the young woman at the reception desk was spending a long time at her computer. Thirty minutes later when I talked to the doctor’s nurse, she asked me some questions that she could only have known from an Internet search. Nothing alarming, but enough to make me aware of the ease in which people can find that elusive piece of information they are seeking.

Government law enforcement agencies can locate you anywhere if you are carrying a cellular phone by pinging your phone and triangulating the response through three different towers. Congress is demanding answers concerning a piece of software installed on iPad. It is alleged to contain an application that will track and record your every movement. It will only be a matter of days until hackers will be able to access this from their phone and track where you have been at any moment of the day or night. To me that is a little scary. The stalkers are, no doubt, waiting in line for access to this new application. Click on the title to this article and it will carry you to an article on the investigation by certain congressional members.

A Dublin Student Doctor

It was a rainy, stormy day, and I needed something entertaining to read. I subscribe to Reader’s Digest Select Editions, and I had already read three of the condensed novels, leaving A Dublin Student Doctor by Irish author Patrick Taylor. The book looked too tedious, and tedious wasn’t the kind of story I needed for on a rainy afternoon. Finally, I sighed rather laboriously, and decided to give Dr. Taylor a chance.

One thing that really puts me off on any novel is one-dimensional characters that seem to know nothing, feel nothing, and accomplish little except to exercise the other bland set of characters in the story. To say that I loved Patrick Taylor’s book, is not eloquent enough to give justice to what he did.
 
A few weeks ago I received an email from a man in Florida who had read one of my books and cobbled a review together that blasted me for creating characters that were too complicated. “Your character was too much of a busybody who spent too much time with his love interest, when he could have been doing something else,” he said. I was not unkind enough to tell this reader that maybe he should read something else by another author, but the thought did cross my mind. I am an old goat that has been around a long time, done most of the things that an ordinary person can do, and I know that real people are very complicated. There was a documentary last year about serial killers. One thing that was surprising to many, but not to me was the revelation that many of these criminals were loving family men; good fathers, considerate toward their wives, and enjoyable to be around.

People are many-dimensional, and it should be reflected in the author’s story. Regardless of how dedicated, busy, complicated, lovable, or depraved a person is, they have someone they love. I love complicated fiction where the characters are many things to many people and their lives are complex, fought with danger, periods of happiness, and frustration. Or to put it another way, I love stories that entertain me, challenge me, and teach me a little of what life is all about. It is the kind of novels I write, and I hope it is the kind of stories you like to read. Enough for now, I need to get back to my latest novel.

Bee Gees

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I was saddened when I read that singer Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees was in a coma in Chelsea hospital in West London. Robin is the last surviving member of the legendary British singing group that performed for us for almost a half century. I think that most of us will remember the Bee Gees best for the soundtrack from the movie Stayin’ Alive. There was something magical about that movie that captivated most of us, not that we lived a life similar to the character that John Travolta played, but rather that we were moved by the music, and could identify with the longing of someone who wanted to excel at what he did. It is the end of a passing era in some ways, but in others the Disco Era will never end as long as we can hum along with the many great hits that were written during those years. I shall always remember Barry, Robin, and Maurice. Their music brought a lot of pleasure into our lives. Click on the title of this article to watch the YouTube video of the Bee Gees performing their hit song from Stayin' Alive.

Another Winner From Writer Felix Francis

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I was saddened when mystery writer Dick Francis passed away in 2010. He was the author of more than 40 international bestsellers, spanning a career that lasted more than a half century. When I read Francis first book, The Sport of Queens, I was immediately hooked. There was just the right amount of mystery and authenticity to keep me turning the pages. All of his books were centered around horseracing, and as a former jockey who rode in more than 300 races, he was able to capture the magic of the sport.

I was pleased when his son, Felix Francis, co-author of his books, decided to continue in his father’s footsteps and keep the tradition alive. Gamble, the novel that I am currently reading, is as exciting as any of the books that went before. I hope there will be many more in the years to come.

Writing Your First Novel

In the last few weeks I have received a large number of emails from writers, especially the ones who are trying to get their first novel off the ground. Some of them were having trouble with their writing, and a lot of them were having problem with formatting and uploading their finished book on Kindle. After answering so many questions, I decided that it would be easier to just put everything together in one small self-help book and make it available to everyone who needs some assistance. This book will not write your book for you, nor will it allow you to publish it on Kindle without doing some of your own research when you get on their site. What it will do is open up the process and point the way to where you can find the information you need. Thinks for visiting my site, and happy writing!

Click this link to read more about my book.

Creating Realistic Characters in Fiction

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Writing fiction is never an easy task because it requires the author to crawl inside the minds of a very diverse group of characters. No writer would put a real person inside a novel, for what would be the point in doing this. We do, however, draw clues from the people we know that helps us understand humanity a little better. While the sadness a friend encounters after losing a loved one will not appear in a book, the experience makes us more aware of what personal loss involves. Our books become richer, more realistic, and in various ways, more helpful to readers who might be going through a personal crisis.

The most difficult characters to create are the ones who commit senseless crimes. A writer friend of mine attempted to probe inside the mind of an inmate who had killed several people in a decade long crime spree. He came away without any additional understanding of the situation, and a feeling that the prisoner did not really understand it himself. One thing that makes it so hard to probe the mind of these people is the fact that they are so skilled at concealing who they really are. People are dangerous, complex, and often loveable. This is the thing that makes fiction so appealing to all of us. Thank you for your visit and happy reading.

The Hunger Games

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“Why don’t you write a romance?” a friend of mine asked. So I explained to her that all of the main characters in my books have a love interest, even the villains. I have discovered that it brings a special dimension to any character to insert a soft center somewhere inside all of that macho posturing.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she protested. “You need to write a real romance. That is what everyone is reading and I think you would be good at it.”

“What are you reading?” I asked, somewhat fearful of her answer. She gave me that kind of grin women give men when they are especially clueless. I found myself looking at the cover of Suzanne Collins’ novel, The Hunger Games. I had only read a few pages before I was hooked. Writers tend to forget from time to time that ‘plot’ is a verb, and is best defined with power words like confrontation, turmoil, or trouble. After reading halfway through The Hunger Games, I am still not convinced that romance is the right genre for me, but it has made me take a new look at the personal relationships in the type of novels I write.

“I’m not sure I can write a straight romance novel,” I told her. “Please . . .” she said. “Please, please, please!”

If she had only said please twice, I might have rejected her suggestion. But three in a row? I feel myself weakening . . .

Author interview by Louise James on her blog March 20-22

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As an avid reader, I never know as much as I want to know about the authors of the books I enjoy. I was pleased to receive an invitation from Louise James who graciously takes the time to promote other authors. Later this week (March 20-22) I will be the author on center stage answering some questions from Louise about my writing. Be sure to drop by and visit her blogs and websites. You will find some interesting and informative information there. See you then.

Click on the title of this article to visit her site.

Joe Prentis
Website: http://www.joeprentiswebsite.com
Blog: http://www.prentisatpickwick.blogspot.com/