WHEN A BEST SELLER AIN'T A GOOD READ_GHOST of SAMUEL CLEMENS

{" A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere."

-Mark Twain.}


Samuel Clemens, ghost here, to help Roland out a mite.

Seems the saw-bones told the boy he has heat exhaustion and should take it easier for a day or two.

Well, I was standing right next to him, stretched out and looking all peaked, so I volunteered to do today's post.

I even had an idea from VR Barkowski's post of yesterday :

http://vrbarkowski.blogspot.com/2011/08/it-cant-suck-its-bestseller.html

And I think my little cyber-column might help out you pilrims a mite, too. After all, I was a newspaper man a'fore I became the great literary genius the world knows and loves.

Now, on to my gem of a post :

My quote next to my picture seems a bit self-evident, don't it?

Well, just read THE PASSAGE by that Justin Cronin fella or THE TONGUES OF SERPENTS.

Both meander worse than a sluggish Mississippi at ebb tide.

But they got published you wail. I was wailing, too ... after I read them.

Sure they got published ... after a string of good writing by said authors.

But Cronin pushed his readers at a distance with page after page after page of narrative summary. Leave the lecturing for the classroom, Justin.

Naomi Novak, poor girl, just seemed to lose her fire, having no danger, no crisis breathing down the neck of her heroes. She managed the impossible : she made a book about dragons boring.

I struggled like you pilgrims to get published. I learned my craft in the newspapers at which I worked one after another clear across this nation.

And I learned a few rules. I'll even share a few with you :

1.) The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Ever hear two people tell the same joke? Both tell it differently. One always tells it better.

One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Talk to the heart of your listener, and you will never go wrong.

2.) Told or unfold?

Histories belong in the classroom. Novels are the place for scenes.

A scene takes place before the reader's eyes. He sees the mysterious stranger being feared, not being told what a hoodoo he is. Your hero runs down the alley, ducking zinging bullets.

The reader sees it happen. He isn't told about it after the fact.

3.) What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

I've read a good bit of what passes for novels these days. They're leaner and meaner. No more Norman Rockwell, exact details down to the slightest freckle.

Novels today are impressionistic like the paintings or a film by that Hitchcock fellow. Why, the most horrific story I ever heard centered on a monster only hinted at, never seen clear ... and the more fearsome because of that.

4.) Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Less is more when it comes to writing. If you hit the poor reader over the head with your point, you'll blunt your point and won't do much for the reader either.

5.) The best words are actions.

What did that Anton Chekhov fellow write?

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Actions pulls your reader into the flow of the story. Preambling just shoves him back to being a distant observer, not a participant.

Give the reader the taste of the wind, the feel of the grit in the badly cooked food, and the ache of a broken heart.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of the battle.

No second-hand prose. Draw the reader into the sound and feel of the actions. He will forget he is reading. He will become a part of the world you have created.

6.) The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Franklin D. Roosevelt originally wrote in his famous speech of December 8, 1941 "a date that will live in history." Later the President scratched out "history" and instead wrote "infamy."

And that line still rings down the corridors of time.

The amateur writer draws attention to himself ...

why, isn't that a beautiful description I've just pounded you over the head with for five pages?

The professional author knows that to draw the reader's attention to himself with mechanics is to draw it away from the story.

You want the reader to be so absorbed in your world that they're not even aware you, the writer, exists.

7.) Writing, I think, is not apart from living.

In fact, writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice.

Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.
***

THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDERING ... YOUR BOOK

Light drifted as a red fog in front of my eyes. I blinked them with an effort.

Consciousness teased me at the edge of the dark of my mind. I tried to move my hands. They were thick, heavy ... far from me ... not my hands at all it seemed.

"Son, you awake with all the clarity of a hot rock," softly laughed a familiar voice.

Raymond Chandler.

With that realization, I finally opened them. I groaned without words.

Chandler was holding my dented copy of THE PASSAGE that the ghost of Mark Twain had taken to show Ernest Hemingway in the Shadowlands. Gypsy, my ghost cat, thumped off my air mattress and onto his lap.

Chandler shook his head at me and gestured to the vacant apartment I was having to live in until repairs were made to my new apartment.

"At least you don't feel crowded."

In his ghost chair by my air mattress, Chandler made room for Gypsy by tossing the big book to the floor. "Don't worry, Roland. I only came to return this travesty of prose. Not to belabor the obvious."

"Ah, Mr. Hemingway ..."

"You know how prone to depression that old boxer is. He's still wandering the Shadowlands, muttering about million dollar book and movie deals."

"I take it you didn't like THE PASSAGE either."

He sat back in his plush leather ghost chair, scratching behind Gypsy's twitching ears. "What's to like?"

He filled his pipe with tobacco. "It is grim and depressing without any true sense of tragedy. You have to care about the people life mangles for there to be tragedy. And it's clear that Cronin doesn't care for his people so we end up not caring either."

He lit his pipe. "No, he just plays with his characters like a child with toy soldiers. And who cares when a toy soldier dies? A personality doesn't die ... just a pawn."

He bent down, picked up the book, flipped the pages for a bit then read : "He could no longer envision his parents' faces. This had been the first thing to go, leaving him in just a matter of days."

He looked at me, more sad than angry. "I had an uncle in Omaha, a minor and crooked (if I'm any judge of character) politician."

His eyes looked off into the shadows, becoming sadder. "As a very small boy I used to spend a part of the summer with him all the way up to the fall."

His voice softened with the remembrance of long ago seasons. "I remember the oak trees and the high wooden sidewalks beside the dirt roads ... and the heat and the fireflies and a lot of other strange insects and the gathering of wild grapes in the fall to make wine ... and once in a while a dead man floating down the muddy river."

He looked into the burning bowl of his pipe silently for long moments then turned back to me. "I remember all that. And Cronin writes that a man forgets the faces of each parent, dead at different times, after ... a few days? I regard his two sentences as disgraces to English prose ... and to the human heart."

His lips twisted into a bitter smile. "But he is a highly praised author while I am but a forgotten hack."

"As long as I'm alive you won't be forgotten, sir."

"You're not getting any younger, Roland."

"Gee, thanks, sir. You have any other reason to visit besides showering me with rays of sunshine?"

"The McGuffin."

"What?"

"Exactly."

"You've lost me."

He smiled crooked. "Not that hard to do so, son."

"I can see you've been talking to all my ex-girl friends."

I covered a half-yawn. "What is this McGuffin? And please don't say 'exactly.'"

He smiled wide around his pipe. "It was the hitch in Hitchcock."

"He made films. He didn't write books."

"Ah, Roland, each novel is a film. Every author is its director. You get to choose the angle of the reader's view of each scene. You choose the lighting, the stars, the script. Your film can be a work of genius."

He made a sour grimace. "Or it can be THE PASSAGE."

"You're singing to the choir, sir. You haven't said what the McGuffin is."

"It's the tagline to your book, Roland. The thing that grabs the attention of the agent and the reader ... and is just as meaningless as all the false fronts to the buildings on a movie set."

He smiled at my frown. "It's what Cronin was trying to use but failed. A McGuffin is a plot element that snares the viewer, drives the plot along, and essentially is not what the movie or novel is about at all."

"I don't understand."

Chandler chuckled. "Take Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS. A spy drama about Nazi agents and a plot to use the evils of uranium. A woman is sent to spy on her old boy friend, a Nazi. Surprises, suspense, and thrills ensue. But the essence of the movie is about two men trying to prove they love the girl. Who does she believe? And why?"

Chandler stabbed at me with his pipe. "That's where Cronin failed. You have to stay with the girl to care. She has to be center stage most of the time. Cronin spends so much time on backstory for characters who stray off the stage, the reader loses focus and attachement."

He stroked Gypsy absently. "Hell, you have to chew a third of the way through his book before you get to characters who stay awhile. Most readers will throw down the book long before then."

He leaned forward, still gesturing with his pipe. "Take NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Hitchcock himself says it contains his emptiest, most nonexistent McGuffin. Halfway through the film, the hero, cursed with being mistaken for a deadly American agent, finds out only his enemy is an importer and exporter of govenment secrets."

Chandler sat back. "That's all the hero gets for his explanation. But you in the audience don't care ... because by then you care for the hero, for his apparently doomed love for a beautiful, deadly girl."

I nodded. "It's like what my mother told me : "Life is staying with the one you brought. Loyalty."

Chandler nodded back. "Yes, tell your epic story. But tell it through the eyes of someone the audience can stick their hopes, worries, and heart on."

His long face shone with the light of a teacher. "The McGuffin is your tagline, son. But it will be your strong characters placed in jeopardy as they struggle for their heart's desire that will sweep your readers along."

He thumped his pipe on the book in his lap as Gypsy wrinkled her nose at the trailing smoke.

"These days movies and books are just McGuffins ... the idea without structure or characters to care about. Or worse, a tease, like a shill crying out at a carnival, promising one thing and delivering quite another."

Chandler sighed, "PSYCHO. Now, we know what it is about. But first viewers of the film thought it was about a stolen $40,000."

He smiled knowingly. "That robbery was only to get us into the Bates motel and a lovely young girl in jeopardy. In bloodier and sloppier fashion, the same could be said of FROM DUSK TO DAWN."

Chandler looked from me into Gypsy's heavy-lidded eyes. "The author is a magician, son. You distract with your McGuffin to hit your reader out of the blue with a sudden surprise and delight."

He blew out his cheeks. "But if the magician bores the audience to sleep with too much distraction, they are all nodding off when he pulls the rabbit out of the hat."

I smiled big. "You know, sir, you're the one who taught me how to write dialogue. And now this."

"How much are you paying me?," he smiled crookedly.

"Ah, nothing."

"I'm worth twice that." He grinned and disappeared.
************
Do you care about the rider in this trailer?

EDIT YOURSELF A BESTSELLER_SAMUEL CLMENS GHOST _HERE TO HELP

{" A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere."

-Mark Twain.}


Samuel Clemens, ghost here, to help Roland out a mite.

Seems the saw-bones has told the boy he has Bronchitis, is infectious, and has to lay off work a day or two.

'Course his supervisor told the boy that he couldn't infect nobody in a car, and Roland shoulda torn up that work release a'fore he showed it to him.

Roland insists that I do not record what I said when I stood next to the man. I will just leave it to your imaginations. Though the fella couldn't hear me, my remark made Roland smile at least.

Now, let me help you pilrims out a mite, too.

My quote next to my picture seems a bit self-evident, don't it?

Well, just read THE PASSAGE or THE TONGUES OF SERPENTS.

Both meander worse than a sluggish Mississippi at ebb tide.

But they got published you wail. I was wailing, too ... after I read them.

Sure they got published ... after a string of good writing by said authors.

But Cronin pushed his readers at a distance with page after page after page of narrative summary. Leave the lecturing for the classroom, Justin.

Naomi Novak, poor girl, just seemed to lose her fire, having no danger, no crisis breathing down the neck of her heroes. She managed the impossible : she made a book on dragons boring.

I struggled like you pilgrims to get published. I learned my craft in the newspapers at which I worked one after another clear across this nation.

And I learned a few rules :

1.) The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Ever hear two people tell the same joke? Both tell it differently. One always tells it better.

One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Talk to the heart of your listener, and you will never go wrong.

2.) Told or unfold?

Histories belong in the classroom. Novels are the place for scenes.

A scene takes place before the reader's eyes. He sees the mysterious stranger being feared, not being told what a hoodoo he is. Your hero runs down the alley, ducking zinging bullets.

The reader sees it happen. He isn't told about it after the fact.

3.) What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

I've read a good bit of what passes for novels these days. They're leaner and meaner. No more Norman Rockwell, exact details down to the slightest freckle.

Novels today are impressionistic like the paintings or a film by that Hitchcock fellow. Why, the most horrific story I ever heard centered on a monster only hinted at, never seen clear ... and the more fearsome because of that.

4.) Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Less is more when it comes to writing. If you hit the poor reader over the head with your point, you'll blunt your point and won't do much for the reader either.

5.) The best words are actions.

What did that Anton Chekhov fellow write?

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Actions pulls your reader into the flow of the story. Preambling just shoves him back to being a distant observer, not a participant.

Give the reader the taste of the wind, the feel of the grit in the badly cooked food, and the ache of a broken heart.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of the battle.

No second-hand prose. Draw the reader into the sound and feel of the actions. He will forget he is reading. He will become a part of the world you have created.

6.) The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Franklin D. Roosevelt originally wrote in his famous speech of December 8, 1941 "a date that will live in history." Later the President scratched out "history" and instead wrote "infamy."

And that line still rings down the corridors of time.

The amateur writer draws attention to himself ...

why, isn't that a beautiful description I've just pounded you over the head with for five pages?

The professional author knows that to draw the reader's attention to himself with mechanics is to draw it away from the story.

You want the reader to be so absorbed in your world that they're not even aware you, the writer, exists.

7.) Writing, I think, is not apart from living.

In fact, writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice.

Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.
***

HOW TO WRITE TO STIR THE DEAD

Don't forget to vote for my entry in Tessa's OUTSIDE THE BOX blogfest :
http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/
The sound of a book hitting the floor hard awakened me. I pried open protesting, heavy eyes. They flew wide when I saw her.

Marlene Dietrich. Or her ghost, actually.

In a frilly black night wrap and not much else. She rose like the spirit she was, picked up the book and threw it down once more. Harder.

"Deine mutter hurt in der stadt!"

"Ah, do I want to know what that means?"

"No!"

She spun her ghost chair around, sitting with easy grace upon it so she leaned upon its high back, and looked hotly at me. "THE PASSAGE! Its author ... oh, there are no good English words. Dorf trottel!"

Marlene smiled wickedly. "And no, you do not want to know the meaning of that either."

She shook her head. "It is like listening to a good joke told badly. Much build-up for little pay-off."

Haunted eyes stabbed into me. "Liebling, the end of the rainbow is just another lonely place where hopes and dreams slowly fade away."

Her long blonde hair slid to half cover her face as she leaned forward. "Do you want that single moment they call fame ... or do you want to touch the heart?"

"You have to ask?"

Her smile illuminated her lovely face, showing the lonely soul within. "Ah, Ich liebe dich."

"Do I want to know the meaning of that?"

Her smile rivaled Mona Lisa's. "No, but later, if you are lucky, I will show you anyway."

She suddenly frowned. Not bending to pick up the book, she merely pounded a pretty foot on it. "He wants that moment ... and the money that writing bestsellers will give him. Ha. He promised vampires and gave endless pages of literary backstory. Bah."

She jabbed a long, slender finger at me. "You want to touch the heart, to write a story that others will come back to again and again?"

"Certainly."

"Then, you must give them dreams, danger, mystery ... and most importantly, you must give them love."

She sat up, running those long fingers through her wavy tangle of hair. "And you must not make it easy, liebling. There must be two problems : one inside the hero -- one outside him."

She looked intently at me, her eyes sparkling like knife points. "Your hero must be his own greatest enemy not some Nazi. Nazi's. Ha! They give him something to hit when he wants to hit himself."

Marlene sighed, her eyes looking into places that seemed to break her heart. "If we have the wit, we can conquer those who would bind us. But against ourselves ...."

She bowed her head, slowly raising it. "Against ourselves, we need help. We need love. The fire burning from one good heart will draw us out of the darkness of ourselves and onto the road leading to healing, to the light. Perhaps not triumph but ...."

She hugged herself. "Ah, but to die in the arms of one you love and who loves you ... that is a victory no Nazi can take away."

Marlene tapped the laptop by my bed. "Here is the stuff dreams are made of, liebling."

Her eyes looked beyond me. "Set your stage quickly. Bring all the players on stage in the first three chapters. Be honest with the audience : let them know who the hero is so that they can attach their hearts to him or her -- tell them the theme :

does money equal success, does fame, or does the trust of one good man mean your life has not been in vain?"

She blinked back sudden tears. "Let the readers have fun with your heroes. Toss everything in the air. Snatch happiness and safety from their heroes. Give the hero one slim chance to get it all back. Take that all away."

Marlene smiled bitterly. "Life is quite good at that. But fiction, unlike life, must end well if you would have publishers buy your tale. Give them that happy ending. Oh, after much darkness, storm, and strife, of course."

Her smile was brittle. "Bring everything down to a single, seemingly impossible showdown. Make the enemy unbeatable."

Marlene's lips brushed my ear. "And unlike life, let the hero win and come away wiser, better, stronger."

"Marlene?"

"Yes, liebling?"

"You did walk away a winner : stronger, wiser, and better."

Marlene cocked her head, letting her hair become a wavy waterfall.
"Dass Liebe, die aus Trümmern auferstand,
Reicher als einst an Größe ist und Kraft."

In a husk, Marlene translated,
"And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater."

"Shakespeare," I said.

"Truth," Marlene smiled sadly.

*********************************************
***************December 7th Post Script :

On one of Marlene's last pictures before WWII broke out, a lowly assistant director was sent home with a high fever, along with harsh words for ever having shown up. He awakened late in the evening to find a woman on her hands and knees scrubbing his kitchen floor. It was the star of the picture he was working on : Marlene Dietrich.

She had heard he lived alone and had brought over some hot chicken soup. Finding his kitchen floor could stand a washing, she was doing the job herself.

For three solid years during WWII, Marlene entertained our troops on the front lines, despite a death sentence on her head. She was with the troops in winter frosts and under broiling sun.

She bathed out of a helmet like an infantryman, slept on the ground, and refused to be evacuated when artillary pounded the ground around her. She was willing to do anything to amuse the troops : playing musical saw and wearing a jeweled sheath over long G.I. underwear to parade to the sound of enemy fire in the distance.

3 years. And she didn't make one movie all that time and cared not a bit. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom. Hitler would have given her a bullet ... after long hours of torture.

Ernest Hemingway wrote of her : "If she had nothing more than her voice, she could break your heart with it. But she has that beautiful body and the timeless loveliness of her face. It makes no difference how she breaks your heart if she is there to mend it."

TWLIGHT'S CHILDREN_PART 1 of 4_TESSA'S OUTSIDE THE BOX BLOGFEST

http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/2010/10/announcing-outside-of-my-box.html


Tessa wants us to write outside our comfort zone. Oddly enough, so did my best friend, Sandra.

I complained to her a dozen times too many about Justin Cronin telling not showing his novel THE PASSAGE.

She challenged me to write a short story doing what did Justin did but better. Obviously, he was aiming at something he missed.

Could I do any better?

And so the short sequel to THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS {and my take on the end prophecised for 2012} was born. Here are the first three pages ....}


TWILIGHT'S CHILDREN

From the cliff of our birth we keep falling, falling. Our fingers reach out for something to hold on to.

Money. Power. Sex.

But they are lies, mirages without substance. We are in free fall. Despite the lie we tell ourselves, we all hit bottom. Yet somehow it always feels like a betrayal.

You would think that we would finally realize the truth. But what is it that the white historians say? The past is prologue.

We First People knew better. The past is only a footnote. As Man is but a footnote in the ancient history of GrandMother Earth.

She existed long before Man peered with bewildered eyes out of his cave. She would be here long after his useless monuments to himself had crumbled back into her soil.

Darkness was descending. And soon would end Man's strange history. Would he, like the dinosaur before him, stare fearful and uncomprehending into the storm that swallowed all his preconceptions into oblivion?

The lights to the room flickered. An odd coldness settled upon me. I had been sensing it for years. It had to begin sometime. And now it had.

Night pressed in on the window. Wings, large and leathery, beat my death song in the darkness. I looked at my wrist handcuffed to the railing of the hospital bed.

White Men. They had always made my life interesting. Why shouldn't they make my death the same?

I looked out through the locked window. Nothing. Not yet. But I sensed a straining from beyond the glass, from beyond what the White Man foolishly called reality.

Man sought to explore that imagined reality as he struggled to roam the stars in ships. I shook my head. He was already on one.

The living planet who gave him birth.

She sailed through a sea of stars at speeds Man could only dream of attaining in his fragile vessels of steel.

Like the most agile of ballerinas, GrandMother Earth spins on her toes at just over a thousand miles an hour.

With the Northern Lights in her wake, she swims through the icy void around her father, Sun, in strokes of over sixteen and a half miles a second.

While Sun holds his daughter in his mighty arms of gravity, he speeds towards a dark destination in a gait of some twelve miles a second.

It is a wonder our noses don't bleed and our heads fly from our very shoulders.

The White Man had become arrogant in his mastery of science as the dinosaur had become confident their rule would never end.

But I had seen the rules of science grow dark with the dawn of quantum mechanics. In the microverse, the same rules did not apply. In fact, often they were reversed.

Why did the White Man feel it would be otherwise in the macroverse?

In my bones I felt GrandMother Earth was just now at the edge of seas where different rules applied.

The freakish weather pointed to it. Energy blackouts were on the rise. Insanity's bloody crimes were daily shouted from the headlines.

GrandMother had taught the First People how to survive in such a realm. The White Man in his arrogance and greed had succeeded in nearly wiping us from her shores.

Most of her teaching to us had been lost.

Was I the last to know it as she had taught it? If so, it would be poetic justice, for the White Man wanted me dead. He would certainly get death.

Killing me would signal the end for him and the rest of Twilight's children.

I stared into the alien depths between familiar stars and whispered, "Weep not for the dead nor mourn him. Rather weep for him who goes away, for he shall return no more nor see his native country."

They were the words of Jeremiah, speaking of another enforced exodus. Jeremiah. I made a sour face. Though the White Man claimed him, he was mostly forgotten ...

or dismissed out of hand as a relic from the past. He was much like the Lakota in that.

The Something beyond the window laughed. The sound rose, spindled, and twisted like icy smoke from the funeral pyre of Man.

The straining stopped outside the window. The cold presence swept away into the night. It was gone.

For the moment.

Death was both patient and impatient. The presence would be back. After all, it had all the time in the world. And Man? He had squandered most of his.

And me? I could not win. But perhaps I could lose more slowly. A darkness within whispered I had best try for this was my last hand.

What had Thomas Wolfe written at his last?

I said the words low, "Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year. Something has spoken in the night, and told me I shall die. I know not where."

The door to my hospital room opened silent and quick. A chill filled the darkness within me.

The Mossad assassin, Shadow.

She stood in the doorway and looked at me with haunted green eyes. In her mid-thirties now, she had been a lost angel at twenty when I had spared her on the Isle of Skye. Now she was just a fallen angel, no longer able to remember the scent of lost innocence.

There was a solid finger-wide streak of moon-white at her right temple. GrandMother's Sign. Estanatlehi always marked those she chose to heal.
***

EDIT YOURSELF INTO PRINT_SAMUEL CLEMENS, GHOST, HERE TO HELP_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{" A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere."

-Mark Twain.}


Samuel Clemens, ghost here, to help you pilgrims.

My above quote seems a bit self-evident, don't it?

Well, just read THE PASSAGE or THE TONGUES OF SERPENTS.

Both meander worse than a sluggish Mississippi at ebb tide.

But they got published you wail. I was wailing, too ... after I read them.

Sure they got published ... after a string of good writing by said authors.

But Cronin pushed his readers at a distance with page after page after page of narrative summary. Leave the lecturing for the classroom, Justin.

Naomi Novak, poor girl, just seemed to lose her fire, having no danger, no crisis breathing down the neck of her heroes. She managed the impossible : she made a book on dragons boring.

I struggled like you pilgrims to get published. I learned my craft in the newspapers at which I worked one after another clear across this nation.

And I learned a few rules :

1.) The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Ever hear two people tell the same joke? Both tell it differently. One always tells it better.

One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Talk to the heart of your listener, and you will never go wrong.

2.) Told or unfold?

Histories belong in the classroom. Novels are the place for scenes.

A scene takes place before the reader's eyes. He sees the mysterious stranger being feared, not being told what a hoodoo he is. Your hero runs down the alley, ducking zinging bullets.

The reader sees it happen. He isn't told about it after the fact.

3.) What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

I've read a good bit of what passes for novels these days. They're leaner and meaner. No more Norman Rockwell, exact details down to the slightest freckle.

Novels today are impressionistic like the paintings or a film by that Hitchcock fellow. Why, the most horrific story I ever heard centered on a monster only hinted at, never seen clear ... and the more fearsome because of that.

4.) Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Less is more when it comes to writing. If you hit the poor reader over the head with your point, you'll blunt your point and won't do much for the reader either.

5.) The best words are actions.

What did that Anton Chekhov fellow write?

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Actions pulls your reader into the flow of the story. Preambling just shoves him back to being a distant observer, not a participant.

Give the reader the taste of the wind, the feel of the grit in the badly cooked food, and the ache of a broken heart.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of the battle.

No second-hand prose. Draw the reader into the sound and feel of the actions. He will forget he is reading. He will become a part of the world you have created.

6.) The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

The amateur writer draws attention to himself ...

why, isn't that a beautiful description I've just pounded you over the head with for five pages?

The professional author knows that to draw the reader's attention to himself with mechanics is to draw it away from the story.

You want the reader to be so absorbed in your world that they're not even aware you, the writer, exists.

7.) Writing, I think, is not apart from living.

In fact, writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice.

Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.
***

THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER

Light drifted as a red fog in front of my eyes. I blinked them with an effort.

Consciousness teased me at the edge of the dark of my mind. I tried to move my hands. They were thick, heavy ... far from me ... not my hands at all it seemed.

"Son, you awake with all the clarity of a hot rock," softly laughed a familiar voice.

Raymond Chandler.

With that realization, I finally opened them. I groaned without words.

He was holding my dented copy of THE PASSAGE that Mark Twain had taken to show Ernest Hemingway. Gypsy, my cat, thumped off my bed and onto his lap.

In his ghost chair by my bed, Chandler made room for her by tossing the big book to the floor. "Don't worry, Roland. I only came to return this travesty of prose. Not to belabor the obvious."

"Ah, Mr. Hemingway ..."

"You know how prone to depression that old boxer is. He's still wandering the Shadowlands, muttering about million dollar book and movie deals."

"I take it you didn't like THE PASSAGE either."

He sat back in his plush leather ghost chair, scratching behind Gypsy's twitching ears. "What's to like?"

He filled his pipe with tobacco. "It is grim and depressing without any true sense of tragedy. You have to care about the people life mangles for there to be tragedy. And it's clear that Cronin doesn't care for his people so we end up not caring either."

He lit his pipe. "No, he just plays with his characters like a child with toy soldiers. And who cares when a toy soldier dies? A personality doesn't die ... just a pawn."

He bent down, picked up the book, flipped the pages for a bit then read : "He could no longer envision his parents' faces. This had been the first thing to go, leaving him in just a matter of days."

He looked at me, more sad than angry. "I had an uncle in Omaha, a minor and crooked (if I'm any judge of character) politician."

His eyes looked off into the shadows, becoming sadder. "As a very small boy I used to spend a part of the summer with him all the way up to the fall."

His voice softened with the remembrance of long ago seasons. "I remember the oak trees and the high wooden sidewalks beside the dirt roads ... and the heat and the fireflies and a lot of other strange insects and the gathering of wild grapes in the fall to make wine ... and once in a while a dead man floating down the muddy river."

He looked into the burning bowl of his pipe silently for long moments then turned back to me. "I remember all that. And Cronin writes that a man forgets the faces of each parent, dead at different times, after ... a few days? I regard his two sentences as disgraces to English prose ... and to the human heart."

His lips twisted into a bitter smile. "But he is a highly praised author while I am but a forgotten hack."

"As long as I'm alive you won't be forgotten, sir."

"You're not getting any younger, Roland."

"Gee, thanks, sir. You have any other reason to visit besides showering me with rays of sunshine?"

"The McGuffin."

"What?"

"Exactly."

"You've lost me."

He smiled crooked. "Not that hard to do so, son."

"I can see you've been talking to all my ex-girl friends."

I covered a half-yawn. "What is this McGuffin? And please don't say 'exactly.'"

He smiled wide around his pipe. "It was the hitch in Hitchcock."

"He made films. He didn't write books."

"Ah, Roland, each novel is a film. Every author is its director. You get to choose the angle of the reader's view of each scene. You choose the lighting, the stars, the script. Your film can be a work of genius."

He made a sour grimace. "Or it can be THE PASSAGE."

"You're singing to the choir, sir. You haven't said what the McGuffin is."

"It's the tagline to your book, Roland. The thing that grabs the attention of the agent and the reader ... and is just as meaningless as all the false fronts to the buildings on a movie set."

He smiled at my frown. "It's what Cronin was trying to use but failed. A McGuffin is a plot element that snares the viewer, drives the plot along, and essentially is not what the movie or novel is about at all."

"I don't understand."

Chandler chuckled. "Take Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS. A spy drama about Nazi agents and a plot to use the evils of uranium. A woman is sent to spy on her old boy friend, a Nazi. Surprises, suspense, and thrills ensue. But the essence of the movie is about two men trying to prove they love the girl. Who does she believe? And why?"

Chandler stabbed at me with his pipe. "That's where Cronin failed. You have to stay with the girl to care. She has to be center stage most of the time. Cronin spends so much time on backstory for characters who stray off the stage, the reader loses focus and attachement."

He stroked Gypsy absently. "Hell, you have to chew a third of the way through his book before you get to characters who stay awhile. Most readers will throw down the book long before then."

He leaned forward, still gesturing with his pipe. "Take NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Hitchcock himself says it contains his emptiest, most nonexistent McGuffin. Halfway through the film, the hero, cursed with being mistaken for a deadly American agent, finds out only his enemy is an importer and exporter of govenment secrets."

Chandler sat back. "That's all the hero gets for his explanation. But you in the audience don't care ... because by then you care for the hero, for his apparently doomed love for a beautiful, deadly girl."

I nodded. "It's like what my mother told me : "Life is staying with the one you brought. Loyalty."

Chandler nodded back. "Yes, tell your epic story. But tell it through the eyes of someone the audience can stick their hopes, worries, and heart on."

His long face shone with the light of a teacher. "The McGuffin is your tagline, son. But it will be your strong characters placed in jeopardy as they struggle for their heart's desire that will sweep your readers along."

He thumped his pipe on the book in his lap as Gypsy wrinkled her nose at the trailing smoke.

"These days movies and books are just McGuffins ... the idea without structure or characters to care about. Or worse, a tease, like a shill crying out at a carnival, promising one thing and delivering quite another."

Chandler sighed, "PSYCHO. Now, we know what it is about. But first viewers of the film thought it was about a stolen $40,000."

He smiled knowingly. "That robbery was only to get us into the Bates motel and a lovely young girl in jeopardy. In bloodier and sloppier fashion, the same could be said of FROM DUSK TO DAWN."

Chandler looked from me into Gypsy's heavy-lidded eyes. "The author is a magician, son. You distract with your McGuffin to hit your reader out of the blue with a sudden surprise and delight."

He blew out his cheeks. "But if the magician bores the audience to sleep with too much distraction, they are all nodding off when he pulls the rabbit out of the hat."

I smiled big. "You know, sir, you're the one who taught me how to write dialogue. And now this."

"How much are you paying me?," he smiled crookedly.

"Ah, nothing."

"I'm worth twice that." He grinned and disappeared.
************
Here is the trailer for Raymond Chandler's most famous novel and movie : THE BIG SLEEP :

PROSE AS BLUNT INSTRUMENT

A hearty cackle of laughter awakened me. I smelled pipe smoke. Now what? My eyes obeyed my order to open ... but reluctantly.

Mark Twain.

He was sitting in his ghost chair by my bed laughing so that his gray/blue eyes were wet with tears. I saw a thick book in his hands. A dented book. My heart sank. He was reading THE PASSAGE. The same book Marlene Dietrich had thrown down in disgust ... twice.

"Marlene warned me. Why this bejiggered paragraph goes on for miles," he chuckled. "Miles and miles and miles."

"Hi, Sam," I yawned. "So you hate THE PASSAGE, too?"

"Hate it? Son, I love it! Why this Cronin fella gives me more ammunition than James Fenimore Cooper ever did."

Gyspy, my cat, frowned at his smoke-reaming pipe. Mark Twain smiled a crooked smile and put it out. He shook his head, flipping two pages.

"Why this blessed paragraph is a veritable blunt instrument of prose. It assaults the eye, dulls the brain. With a paragraph that winds on for twenty pages, the words just fuzz together, don't you know?"

He smiled wide. "This Cronin boy sure seems in love with his words, don't he? He went and forgot the first rule of writing :

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God's adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by."

Gypsy jumped in his lap and curled into a purring ball beside the book. Mark Twain's face softened with a slight smile. He began petting her.

"This Cronin fella forgot that the time to begin writing your book is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."

I half-covered a yawn. "Well, he certainly says a lot in that book."

He jabbed his pipe at me. "And that's the bejiggered trouble, Roland. He says the story. He doesn't show it."

He punched the open pages with his pipe stem. "Take this here section. Why he goes on and on SAYING the story. There's fragments of history. Whole blamed generations of folks just talked about in too many pages. Then, there's Peter, his father, Arlo, Milo, Theo."

He shuddered. "I'm afraid to go on lest I see Hi-Yo and his sister, Silver."

He thumbed the pages, stopped, and yelped, "Lord God All Mighty, I see dialogue. Real honest to politician, quotation marked dialogue."

His face screwed up as if he had bitten into a sour lemon. "Not great dialogue. Not even good dialogue."

"Tepid, huh?"

"Tepid? Hell, son, it ain't even tepid. You'd have to scald it some to get it to tepid."

His gray/blue eyes suddenly lit up. "It comes to me!"

"What?"

"Why ain't he the clever one? He beats you over the head with page after page of blunt prose, saying the story, not showing it, until when he finally relents and grudgingly gives you some dialogue, you don't care if it has all the kick of a dusty tombstone, you're just so blessed relieved to see some, you start to cry."

"You really don't like his dialogue, do you, Sam?"

"Like it? It all sounds the same. All the men sound the same. Amy sounds like Auntie who sounds like ...."

He scratched his head. "I rightly don't know of any non-drooling girl that sounds like Auntie. Why, she's a little girl, right? But old Cronin has her spouting deep philosophical mutterings like some opium-addled poet. Sounded nice ... just not from a little girl. It jarred like nails across my mind's blackboard, don't you know?"

He wrinkled his lips. "Oh, Cronin did half-decent with that Wolfgang character."

"Gast, sir."

"You got gas, son?"

"Never mind."

"Where was I? Oh, yes, Wolfgang and Amy. He could have made all the time spent on his endless backstory worth it, if he had infected the man just a little. You know, making him the eternal father to the eternal little girl. Like THE ROAD but happier, don't you know?"

He fixed me with piercing eyes. "I think I might just have a ghost heart attack if that Cormac McCarthy ever writes a happy tale. Being an ar-teeest doesn't mean you have to depress the bejeesus out of us all the time."

He scratched behind Gypsy's ears. "It's clear there's one man who hates this book more than us, Roland."

"Who?"

"This Cronin fella."

"But he wrote it."

"Yes, and it's clear he didn't want to. Why he goes off on tangent after tanget before he finally drags his feet over to the horror that he promised. It destroys the book. Downright destroys it."

He stroked his moustache. "To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself."

He cackled a dry laugh. "Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

His eagle eyes turned to me. "You have a poet's flair, son. And even better, despite the lyrical beauty of your turn of phrase, I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences."

He jabbed his pipe at me again. "That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; if you're going to put flowers in, at least arrange them in neat rows. When you catch a stray adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable."

He nodded as if to himself. "They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

He glared at THE PASSAGE. "You know the first rule of writing is that a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere."

"Ah, you already gave a first rule of writing, Sam."

"Who's the highly praised, beloved genius in this room, son? Like I was saying ... The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it."

"That's not exactly what you were saying ...."

The rest of my words withered under his stare. "I was saying that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. Even in the case of vampire stories, the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there."

"That's an awful lot of first rules," I muttered.

Mark Twain stonily ignored me and thumped the book with his pipe. "Old Cronin went and forgot that."

His face lit up. "Ernie. I think I'll take this book to Ernie."

I went cold. "Ernie as in Ernest? Ernest Hemingway? Why he'll ...."

Mark Twain smiled wide and evil. "Yes, he will. Oooh, I sure wouldn't want to be in this Cronin's dreams tomorrow night."

He rose and softly deposited a sleeping Gypsy on my bed. "Mind if I take this durned book?"

Thinking of all the midnight guests I wouldn't be having, I smiled. "No. Take it, please."

His eyes suddenly twinkled. "I'll have Ernie bring it back."

"No," I groaned.

But Mark Twain was already gone. Gyspy opened one bemused eye then went back to sleep. Ever have one of those nights?
************
And here is Thea Gilmore with an audio lesson on how to paint with words :

HOW TO MAKE YOUR TALE MEMORABLE

The sound of a book hitting the floor hard awakened me. I pried open protesting, heavy eyes. They flew wide when I saw her.

Marlene Dietrich.

In a frilly black night wrap and not much else. She rose like the ghost she was, picked up the book and threw it down once more. Harder.

"Deine mutter hurt in der stadt!"

"Ah, do I want to know what that means?"

"No!"

She spun her ghost chair around, sitting with easy grace upon it so she leaned upon its high back, and looked hotly at me. "THE PASSAGE! Its author ... oh, there are no good English words. Dorf trottel!"

Marlene smiled wickedly. "And no, you do not want to know the meaning of that either."

She shook her head. "It is like listening to a good joke told badly. Much build-up for little pay-off."

Haunted eyes stabbed into me. "Liebling, the end of the rainbow is just another lonely place where hopes and dreams slowly fade away."

Her long blonde hair slid to half cover her face as she leaned forward. "Do you want that single moment they call fame ... or do you want to touch the heart?"

"You have to ask?"

Her smile illuminated her lovely face, showing the lonely soul within. "Ah, Ich liebe dich."

"Do I want to know the meaning of that?"

Her smile rivaled Mona Lisa's. "No, but later, if you are lucky, I will show you anyway."

She suddenly frowned. Not bending to pick up the book, she merely pounded a pretty foot on it. "He wants that moment ... and the money that writing bestsellers will give him. Ha. He promised vampires and gave endless pages of literary backstory. Bah."

She jabbed a long, slender finger at me. "You want to touch the heart, to write a story that others will come back to again and again?"

"Certainly."

"Then, you must give them dreams, danger, mystery ... and most importantly, you must give them love."

She sat up, running those long fingers through her wavy tangle of hair. "And you must not make it easy, liebling. There must be two problems : one inside the hero -- one outside him."

She looked intently at me, her eyes sparkling like knife points. "Your hero must be his own greatest enemy not some Nazi. Nazi's. Ha! They give him something to hit when he wants to hit himself."

Marlene sighed, her eyes looking into places that seemed to break her heart. "If we have the wit, we can conquer those who would bind us. But against ourselves ...."

She bowed her head, slowly raising it. "Against ourselves, we need help. We need love. The fire burning from one good heart will draw us out of the darkness of ourselves and onto the road leading to healing, to the light. Perhaps not triumph but ...."

She hugged herself. "Ah, but to die in the arms of one you love and who loves you ... that is a victory no Nazi can take away."

Marlene tapped the laptop by my bed. "Here is the stuff dreams are made of, liebling."

Her eyes looked beyond me. "Set your stage quickly. Bring all the players on stage in the first three chapters. Be honest with the audience : let them know who the hero is so that they can attach their hearts to him or her -- tell them the theme :

does money equal success, does fame, or does the trust of one good man mean your life has not been in vain?"

She blinked back sudden tears. "Let the readers have fun with your heroes. Toss everything in the air. Snatch happiness and safety from their heroes. Give the hero one slim chance to get it all back. Take that all away."

Marlene smiled bitterly. "Life is quite good at that. But fiction, unlike life, must end well if you would have publishers buy your tale. Give them that happy ending. Oh, after much darkness, storm, and strife, of course."

Her smile was brittle. "Bring everything down to a single, seemingly impossible showdown. Make the enemy unbeatable."

Marlene's lips brushed my ear. "And unlike life, let the good guy win and come away wiser, better, stronger."

"Marlene?"

"Yes, liebling?"

"You did walk away a winner : stronger, wiser, and better."

Marlene cocked her head, letting her hair become a wavy waterfall.
"Dass Liebe, die aus Trümmern auferstand,
Reicher als einst an Größe ist und Kraft."

In a husk, Marlene translated,
"And ruin'd love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater."

"Shakespeare," I said.

"Truth," Marlene smiled sadly.

*********************************************


***************
July 4th Post Script :

On one of Marlene's last pictures before WWII broke out, a lowly assistant director was sent home with a high fever, along with harsh words for ever having shown up. He awakened late in the evening to find a woman on her hands and knees scrubbing his kitchen floor. It was the star of the picture he was working on : Marlene Dietrich.

She had heard he lived alone and had brought over some hot chicken soup. Finding his kitchen floor could stand a washing, she was doing the job herself.

For three solid years during WWII, Marlene entertained our troops on the front lines, despite a death sentence on her head. She was with the troops in winter frosts and under broiling sun.

She bathed out of a helmet like an infantryman, slept on the ground, and refused to be evacuated when artillary pounded the ground around her. She was willing to do anything to amuse the troops : playing musical saw and wearing a jeweled sheath over long G.I. underwear to parade to the sound of enemy fire in the distance.

3 years. And she didn't make one movie all that time and cared not a bit. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom. Hitler would have given her a bullet ... after long hours of torture.

Ernest Hemingway wrote of her : "If she had nothing more than her voice, she could break your heart with it. But she has that beautiful body and the timeless loveliness of her face. It makes no difference how she breaks your heart if she is there to mend it."

BIZARRO BOOKS

Bizarro books.

I've read them. You've read them. Sure you have. You just didn't use that term.


Bizarro was the character from the Superman universe who was a mirror opposite of the Man of Steel, doing everything backwards.


Hence my photograph of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.


He wrote backwards in them. Some say it was because he was left-handed. Others say it was because he was dyslexic {which would help explain his difficulty in completing paintings and assignments.}


Still others say it was to keep his secrets : dissecting human corpses was considered proof of witchcraft and necromancy by the Catholic Church in those days. I guess it's not smiled on by them when done by private citizens these days either.


But back to Bizarro Books :


You know the path of good writing : you create tension, you increase the dangers crowding in on your heroes, and you narrow the focus like a lab tech with a microscope. Your narrative is a spear hurled with all your creative might. And remember :


A spear has no branches.


Stephen King and Zoe C. Courtman both endorsed Justin Cronin's THE PASSAGE. That was enough for me. I downloaded it onto my Kindle.


While I was being forgotten by the Beaumont blood center at the wild gas station we couriers call "the Star Wars cantina" in Orange, Texas, I had an unexpected hour and a half to read 20% of it {between politely refusing four crack addicts the opportunity for affordable romance, that is.}


Mistakes happen. The couriers at Beaumont just plain forgot about me. But if that's the worst thing that happens to me all weekend, won't I be a lucky man?



But back to THE PASSAGE. One review said "I couldn't turn the pages fast enough." And he was right. I was skimming page after page while shouting in the van, "Get on with it, already, Justin!"


There was more backstory than story.



My mother was once a chaperone to one of my first junior high dances, and she came to me after two young ladies suggested I leave the dance with them and not my original date.


After the second one, she slipped silently beside me and smiled, "That one was very pretty, Roland. It must have been hard to say "no.""


I shook my head. "I'm going to stay with the one I brought, Mother."


"Those are wise words, son. And they apply to more than just a dance."


She started to ruffle my hair but stopped when I whispered, "Not in front of everyone!"


She laughed all the way back to her corner.



But "Stay with the one you brought" is good advise for writers, too. We get tempted to stray into sideroads of different characters. No. Stay with the narrative you started.


No detours, no matter how artistic they are. If they slow down the story, roadblock them in your mind.


Critics praise THE PASSAGE. But in the words of Bizarro : "I R not critic. I R audience. I pay 10 bucks. I get Arteest writing for self not reader."


Two-thirds of Justin's backstory could have been trimmed, making the story flow smoother, faster, and more enjoyable. {Trust me. If his book is made into a movie, it will be.} He wasn't building reader tension -- he was building reader frustration.



I love the poetry of words. When I skim through pages at a gallop, something is wrong. Those are just my opinions. But they were also my ten dollars. If he had been getting closer to the danger, to the supernatural mystery, I would have felt better.


No, I got the sense he actually hated the supernatural aspect of his story. Somehow he got forced into it, and he took every chance to veer away and write artistic literary fiction. I'm all for literary fiction. But don't promise me pizza and give me oat meal. I had my mouth set for pizza, darn it!

{I've just gotten through reading THE NEW YORK TIMES review of the book. In part it reads : "As Justin Cronin clearly knows, if you’re a writer seeking to slough off highbrow pretensions — to reject your early efforts at “quiet” fiction and write something with commercial appeal, something that will, if not conquer the critics, at least pay for your kid’s college education — you’d be wise to opt for a vampire novel.

Ballantine Books bought the trilogy for over $3 million, and the film rights to the novel sold before the book was completed. If there’s a class at Iowa on exploiting publishing crazes, Cronin surely aced it." }



I bought the thriller, CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, by the New York Times bestselling team of Preston and Child. I found the same bloated side trips into backstory that slowed down the narrative. I put it down to two authors losing track of their story and each other. There were whole chapters not necessary to the flow of the story. In fact, they made the book feel bloated. The premise, as in THE PASSAGE, was intriguing. It just got lost.


I bought another in the series, STILL LIFE WITH CROWS, at the same time. It is collecting cyber-dust in my Kindle. And we're talking an albino Sherlock Holmes who works within an X-Files type department within the FBI here. And I still won't touch it.



Ever hear someone tell a joke you already know? But they were telling it so badly, you caught yourself going, "Somebody just shoot. Me or him. I don't care. One of us has got to have relief."



Now, backstory can be done well. THE KEEP is an example. Nazis getting picked off one by one by a supernatural killer their greed let loose from its ancient prison.


The book did so well that the publishers snapped up F. Paul Wilson's second book. They re-named it THE TOMB. He pleaded with them : "There's no tomb in THE TOMB!"


In true Bizarro fashion, their actual response was : "Yes, but the readers loved your book, THE KEEP, so much, they'll snatch up this one with a similar title. By the time the readers figure out there's no tomb in it, the book will be bought and enjoyed enough for good word of mouth."


Which they got in Stephen King, who became the President of The Repairman Jack Fan Cub. {THE TOMB was the first in the Repairman Jack series of urban fantasies.} If you haven't tried one of those books, please get a copy of the tombless THE TOMB.



{Repairman Jack is a fixer of situations -- situations wherein someone has gotten a raw deal and wants to set things right. He has no social security number, no credit cards, pays no taxes, and makes every attempt to avoid the spotlight whenever possible.



The Wesphalen family is living under a curse; a death curse placed a century ago in retaliation for the murderous acts committed by a greedy ancestor.



Kusim Bhakti and his sister have come to New York City to carry out the curse and wipe out the rest of the Westphalen line. To assist with this task, Kusim has brought with him the Rakoshi, perversions of the human species brought about eons ago from the Otherness. You'll discover more about the Otherness in the books that follow.}



Such is the joy, you might say of selecting my own examples. True. So how about you? Have you ever picked up a book, caught up by the premise and a sampling of the prose, only to feel it bloated as if the author were being paid by the word?



Have you ever read a book someone raved about, only to feel it took forever to get to the point? And when it did, it was hardly worth the effort. The moral, being evil hurts people, is hardly earth-shattering.



Why do you read?



Is it for information, for research? I do that too. But why do you read fiction?



Isn't it to be caught up in a sense of wonder, of rooting for a character you care about?



The abandoning mother in THE PASSAGE was dealt with in such painful, long detail, I suspected Justin of enjoying inflicting abuse and abasement on a woman.



He truly only needed a third of that detail to supply the reader with her motivations. It got me hoping he wasn't married ... for the wife's sake.


Authors who spend fingernail-pulling amounts of time on the physical and emotional torture of their characters tend to make me think some of them might have issues with the parent of the characters' sex.



Have any of you felt like the author or the publishers teased you with a false promise, delievering another horse of another breed altogether? Which titles? What authors?



Feel free to tell me I'm full of apple sauce on this. It's just my take on the present world of publishing. I'm curious. And I bet our other friends out there reading this are curious on your take on this as well.

*************************

And just because this song was playing on my computer as I was writing this here is :