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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

WHAT WOULD YOU PAY FOR THE PERFECT FIRST LINE?

Would you pay months or even years?


Stephen King pays that much ... every time.

He says, "The best first line I ever wrote is the opening of 'Needful Things.' Printed by itself on a page in 20-point type:

 "You've been here before." 

All there by itself on one page, inviting the reader to keep reading. It suggests a familiar story."

He further says in his interview with THE ATLANTIC:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/why-stephen-king-spends-months-and-even-years-writing-opening-sentences/278043/

"When I'm starting a book, I compose in bed before I go to sleep. I will lie there in the dark and think. I'll try to write a paragraph. An opening paragraph.

And over a period of weeks and months and even years, I'll word and reword it until I'm happy with what I've got. If I can get that first paragraph right, I'll know I can do the book.

Because of this, I think, my first sentences stick with me. They were a doorway I went through.

The opening line of 11/22/63 is "I've never been what you'd call a crying man."

The opening line of Salem's Lot is "Everybody thought the man and the boy were father and son."

 See? I remember them!

The opening line of It is
"The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

That's one that I worked over and over and over.

I can tell you right now that the best first line I ever wrote -- and I learned it from Cain, and learned it from Fairbairn -- is the opening of Needful Things.

It's the story about this guy who comes to town, and uses grudges and sleeping animosities among the townspeople to whip everyone up into a frenzy of neighbor against neighbor.

And so the story starts off with an opening line, printed by itself on a page in 20-point type:
You've been here before.
All there by itself on one page, inviting the reader to keep reading. It suggests a familiar story; at the same time, the unusual presentation brings us outside the realm of the ordinary.

And this, in a way, is a promise of the book that's going to come. The story of neighbor against neighbor is the oldest story in the world, and yet this telling is (I hope) strange and somehow different.

Sometimes it's important to find that kind of line: one that encapsulates what's going to happen later without being a big thematic statement.

Still, I don't have a lot of books where that opening line is poetry or beautiful. Sometimes it's perfectly workman-like.

You try to find something that's going to offer that crucial way in, any way in, whatever it is as long as it works. This approach is closer to what worked for in my new book, Doctor Sleep.



All I remember is wanting to leapfrog from the timeframe of The Shining into the present by talking about presidents, without using their names.

The peanut farmer president, the actor president, the president who played the saxophone, and so on. The sentence is:
On the second day of December, in a year when a Georgia peanut farmer was doing business in the White House, one of Colorado's great resort hotels burned to the ground.

 It's supposed to do three things. It sets you in time. It sets you in place. And it recalls the ending of the book -- though I don't know it will do much good for people who only saw the movie, because the hotel doesn't burn in the movie.

Listen, you can't live on love, and you can't create a writing career based on first lines.

A book won't stand or fall on the very first line of prose --

the story has got to be there, and that's the real work.

And yet a really good first line can do so much to establish that crucial sense of voice -- it's the first thing that acquaints you, that makes you eager, that starts to enlist you for the long haul.

So there's incredible power in it, when you say, come in here. You want to know about this. And someone begins to listen."

What was the favorite first line you ever read?
What is ther favorite first line you ever wrote?

Mine is from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE:

"It rained lies and death today."

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

DO YOU HESITATE TO PICK UP A BOOK IN THE MIDDLE OF A SERIES?

Is it going to be worth it? 


How do we, as avid readers, decide we’re willing to take on a new series? 

If it’s every bit as good as promised, it’s going to end up on the auto-buy list. You’ll devour the next and the next.

 Really, you’re starting a relationship with the author. Are you ready to make a commitment to stick with these characters for a few months?

 If you decide to jump in and take the gamble, most like you will then groan about how you're so behind on your to-read pile.

 Perhaps the truth here is if you’re really a reader, you’re always going to be behind on your reading list.

 There will never be a time when there aren’t new books you need to devour, when there isn’t something you just must read.

What’s the last series you got addicted to?

This train of thought got me to thinking of that reluctance to start a series with several books already published.

I decided that Victor needed a stand-alone book: 

An introduction to his world, his enemies, and the fantasy realms that breathe in the haunted French Quarter shadows.

What better story for that than Victor showing a dangerous ally around Meilori's and the surrounding streets? 

So Coyote (the Native American Trickster) shows up to court young Becca!  

Talk about an April/December relationship!!  

What is Victor to do?  

To make Victor jealous, the foolhardy Becca encourages the entity from beyond Time itself. 

And all the while, Victor's and Samuel's enemies hover in the darkness, ready to pounce.

So I have my next book to start writing: 

MORE THAN A NAME


FIRST PAGE



CHAPTER ONE
COYOTE COMES A’COURTING

“Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.”
–G. K. Chesterton


The End of Days was just the beginning.
It is a cold world – which is a good thing.  It drives people closer for warmth.  There are many kinds of warmth, just like there are many kinds of cold.  The worst kind of cold is loneliness; the second worst is fear.   
 You might think it would be the other way around.  But it is not.  If you have someone who loves you, then you can survive fear.  Usually though the two, loneliness and fear, go together – it’s just the way of this cold world.
I have survived eight years on the streets, starting when I was seven years old.  I know all about fear and loneliness.   They’re old traveling companions.  But don’t think my life has been controlled by fear.  
 I refused to let its cold fingers take the reins of my life.  I decided the building blocks of your life were your thoughts – shitty thoughts equaled a shitty life.  And I insisted I was going to have an … interesting life. 
And I have.  Just like I have a simple philosophy:
“No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be burned by the beauty of this world, to hunger for truth and meaning, to hunt for wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.  No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.”
I sighed low, ““This world, which has the promise of Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our greed and conceit, we have made it so.”
Alice, sitting beside me at Captain Sam’s table in Meilori’s, frowned, “What did you say, Victor?”
My ghoul friend sat up straighter, her face going paler than usual.  “Oh, my!  It is Toomey Starks, Trish, and … Coyote!”
Alice said that last name in two syllables.  I shook my head.  It wasn’t that I had bad luck.  I just had strange luck.
And strange luck was what Coyote, the Trickster of Native American myth, always brought with him.  But then, since he had helped me postpone the End of Days, I could hardly begrudge him a visit to Captain Sam’s haunted jazz club.  
 But there would be trouble.  That was something else Coyote always brought with him.

And for some laughs:

HAVE CRITICS GONE OUT OF THEIR WAY TO SABOTAGE THIS SUMMER'S MOVIES?


Johnny Depp feels that the critics wanted THE LONE RANGER to tank. 

He said in a recent interview that his children loved it -- were swept away by the myth of it.

I watched the movie and loved it, wondering if the critics saw the same movie I was seeing.

the wolverine comic con 2013 japan

When THE WOLVERINE first came out Thursday, headlines proclaimed IT SLASHES THROUGH THE COMPETITION.

Then, there were critics calling a $60 million opening a disappointment?

I am an old Wolverine comic fan, and I was disappointed by the prior Wolverine movie.  I read Alex's review Monday, but I still went to see for myself.

It was the Wolverine movie I had wanted the first one to be. 

There's a ton of great scenes in "The Wolverine" – Hello, ninjas! – that fight sequence on the bullet train was awesome!

To see Logan prevailing against opponents despite his failing healing factor made the tension more intense not less.

I liked his "bodyguard" Yuriko -- she added spice and zest to the stoic Logan.

I wasn't bothered by Mariko being younger than Logan.  Hello -- he's immortal --

every woman he meets is younger than he is. 

But perhaps the coolest part of the film takes place after the credits roll.

Two years after Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) has taken care of said ninjas, as well as a giant semi-robotic samurai and the foul-mouthed, green-leotarded Viper,

our hero finds himself standing in line at an airport metal detector.

He looks up to see a TV playing a commercial advertising Trask Industries (the company infamous for launching the Sentinels, who will be hunting down mutants in next summer's "X-Men: Days of Future Past").

Actors Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen promote "X-Men: Days of Future Past" during Comic-Con International. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
And then, things get really interesting.

PACIFIC RIM was fun for what it was.  The critics slammed it for not being Hamlet.  The box office in China may give the movie the sequel fans want to see.

IRON MAN 3 was slammed, but THE AVENGERS momentum couldn't be stopped by nay-saying critics.

JOHN CARTER OF MARS was slammed by the critics.  I went to see it anyway because I loved the books.  I loved the movie. 

47 RONIN is being slammed on the basis of its trailer alone and the fact that it is running over-budget (something every film seems to do lately.)  But really?  On the trailer alone?

I believe negative press colors the expectations of the audiences.  They expect to see a dog and that is what they see.

Have any films you liked lately gotten savaged by the critics?
 
An "understated" review by a Wolverine fan:
 
 

Monday, July 29, 2013

EVER WONDER WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING?

 
Do you ever wonder what I do for a living?
 
 
It's not quite that romantic -- though much of it is done in the dark of night ...
 
 
driving rare blood to hospitals near and far
 
 
If you want to know what a rare blood courier does ... Stephen King style
 
Listen to BLOOD WILL TELL -- only $6.08  HOW NEAT IS THAT?
 

SECRETS

 
SECRETS
 
We all have them.  Deep inside we know others do, too.
 
But we deny.
 
Those two nice young men who greet you every morning.
Such nice boys.
Then, they set bombs off at the Boston Marathon.
 
We look up into the brooding storm clouds
and see fiery lightning baring its teeth at us from the dark heavens.
 
Just atmospheric conditions.  Nothing to worry about.
It's not like an actual Odin is upset with us.
 
Or are we wrong?
 
 

Some secrets are like dreams, just waiting in darkness hoping to get into the light.
“Secrets of the Ash Tree” is the story about Liv, a young woman who discovers her true nature through the unraveling of hidden secrets.
Her adventures begin when she digs up a chest that was buried by her father under the old ash tree in her garden. What she finds inside the chest changes her life forever.  
Liv discovers one secret after another and is thrown into a world full of dangerous and strange creatures, mighty Norse warriors and perils beyond her belief.
What started out as a fairy tale in her father’s journal was to become her legacy, a guide line to survival, and a map to the world she was about to enter.
Each day, each mystery, each encounter will ultimately reveal her true destiny and behind the edge of a sword awaits a young god who is willing to share that destiny with her.
 
Read but a page of SECRETS OF THE ASH TREE and you will be swept up into the magic and myth of the wonderful world Siv Maria Ottem has created.

For only $6.08 listen to what a rare blood courier like myself does --
Stephen King style
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Will-Tell/dp/B00E7UTGLS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375130080&sr=8-4&keywords=blood+will+tell+audiobook
 

Sunday, July 28, 2013

DO YOU READ TO THE END OF LONG POSTS?


Do you read to the end of loooong posts?

Megan doesn't.  But as you can see: she can't even be bothered to buy new stockings!

I usually do since with posts, like with Forest's box of chocolates, you never know what you might get!

But just in case some of you didn't last to the end of my last post, 

Here is the ULTIMATE  PRIZE for my END OF DAYS AUDIOBOOK CONTEST --

Should 15 review my audiobook of END OF DAYS,


I will have my computer-generator select from
those 15 names for 

an autographed copy of


HOW COOL IS THAT?
You have 4 and a half months to listen to this audiobook
and write a review!


NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!



"Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1."

Are you like me?

You look at a great prize in a contest, and say, "I'll never win."

Not with my contests!

Look at the odds for my eBook contests
alone -


THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT:
The prizes?


When will I draw for these autographed photos?

When 10 honest reviews are posted on Amazon.

Guess what?

3 reviews are already posted.

Only 7 more have to be posted before I draw.

Your odds 1 out of 10!



UNDER A VOODOO MOON

The prizes?

Autographed WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE by JIM BUTCHER!

And a mystery Facebook prize
you'll have to go to my facebook page to find

Oh, all right
I'll show you here!


There is already one review.
Only 9 to go.
Same odds as above: 1 out of 10!

You think you know of my END OF DAYS
PRIZES:





Win the Autographs of


















PLUS


THE SECOND PRIZE





Jennifer Lawrence



CATCHING FIRE POSTER


These are the prizes that can be won by

posting a review of END OF DAYS AUDIOBOOK

on Amazon or Audible



Special Offer



Download for Free with
Audible.com 30-day free trial

Start your free trial at Audible.com



Drawing to be held

December 13th

(the release date of THE HOBBIT 2)


WHY?


For as with THE HOBBIT 2

THE END OF DAYS

has dragons, elves, Sidhe, wizards

and

a last ditch fight against Evil.
https://www.acx.com/narrator?p=A2N6QSHVI8L4GG
But should 15 review my audiobook of END OF DAYS,

I will have my computer-generator select from
those 15 names for 

an autographed copy of


HOW COOL IS THAT?
You have 4 and a half months to listen to this audiobook
and write a review!

Now for an understated reaction
to THE MAN OF STEEL
Sequel: