NaNoWriMo writer's aid : THE EYE OF THE EAGLE

THE EYE OF THE EAGLE

It's what you need if you are going to spot the eerie NAZCA LINES for writers.

And if you are participating in NaNoWriMo this month, you are going to need those lines!

The mysterious Nazca lines.

What fan of the arcane and the supernatural has not heard of them?

But did you know that there were equally mysterious Nazca Lines for writers?



Bet you didn't.



But there are. And you need to know them. Imagine this scenario :

you're at a writer's conference. You're waiting for the elevator doors to open and take you to listen to your favorite author. They open. He storms out. You stumble into the elevator and bump into none other than the president of HarperCollins Publishing.



The doors close, and he glares at you. "That jerk just told me I needed him. Me need him? I made him. I could make you. Hey, you tell me what your book is about in one sentence. I like it. I'll publish it. Well, just don't stare at me. Give me that sentence!"



What do you say? Besides "Oh, shit!" to yourself. And right now, as you read this, if you're writing a novel, you better have that sentence crystal clear in your mind. If you don't, you need those mysterious Nazca Lines for authors.



What is your novel about, Roland? Now is no time for ah's. "It's about a man, nearing retirement, invited to a company country retreat, only to find out it is his employers' deadly way of downsizing by 'accident' to avoid paying him his benefits."



The president's eyes roll up. "Why should I care? What's the shake-up in this retread?"



"Ah, you see, he's not human. He's ... he's an alien with gruesome dietary needs. And he's more than happy to add these company killers to his menu."



"Hey, that might work. Give me an eagle-eye view of this."



Eagle-eye view. That is what the Nazca Lines for authors happens to be.



First Nazca Line - The theme in one sentence.

In an important aspect, a good novel is an argument posed by the author to the reader. As in : what is more important, love or success? What is love really? And success? How do you measure that? Your theme is your argument.



How do you get your theme seamlessly inserted into your novel? Usually thourgh the lips of a secondary character. In my LOVE LIKE DEATH, Webster, the one-eyed orphanage headmaster, stalks towards my young hero as the orphange burns down around them.



He jabs at his empty eye-socket. "You want the truth? You want to understand? That costs, boy. It costs!" {As it turns out Webster is really Wotan, he who you might know as Odin -- and wisdom cost him his eye.}



Second - The Book-Ends :


The Opening Scene and Your Closing Scene.


Some publishers look at the first 10 pages and the last 10 pages. Think of them as the "Before" and "After" photos in all those advertisements. There has to be a drastic change in the main character underlinging your theme or the rubber stamp "REJECT" comes down on your manuscript. Ouch.



Third - The Set-Up Lines :


The first 50 pages or the first 3 chapters.


In those you must set-up your hero, the life-or-death stakes, the goal of the story, and all the major characters are introduced or hinted at. Think of any classic Hollywood movie. In the first 15 minutes you will see that same set-up. You don't have it in your novel? You don't have a good novel. Or least that is what the publisher will think. And he is the one we're trying to sell.



Fourth - The Flaws That Show & Those That Don't :


You should have three major time bombs in your hero's life that need fixing and three minor ones that prevent him from seeing the real problems in his life. Tick. Tick. Tick. BOOM!



Fifth : Let The Games Begin :



Fun. That's what gets readers to come back for a second and third read. It what gets them to urge friends to read. Let the hero and his circle of comrades have adventure. Let them get away with the loot. Let them thumb their noses at the howling Dark Ones. It's what would be on the poster if your novel was turned into a movie. Luke and Leia swinging on that rope. Quigley shooting his rifle over impossible distances. Iron Man streaking across the dark heavens ... to slam into the brick wall of the next Nazca Line ---



Sixth - The Twilight of The Gods :


Or that is what I call it : the hero realizes too late a harsh truth. The forces of darkness have won. He is alone. There is no hope. He comes face to face with the fool that he was. And then, kneeling in blood and ashes, he decides ...



Seventh - The Phoenix Rises/ The Catalyst Sizzles :



There is losing. Then, there's quiting. The hero decides to fight on. But fight on smarter. The bad news was really the good news. It is that moment the reader loves. The harsh realities that every reader faces is tilted on its ear by a carefully sown subplot. The person the hero thought he has lost returns. And the forces of darkness discover you never count a hero down until you see his corpse. And maybe not even then.



Eighth - The Mid-Point Line :


The stakes are raised. The hero wins. Or does he? The floor bottoms out beneath him. All is lost. The hero was a fool. He obtained his goal, only to discover he had lost the real treasure in getting a tarnished, empty vessel.



Ninth - The Wolves Close In :


What makes a hero? What ticks inside a proponent of Evil? The answers to those two questions are what turns defeat into a learning, growing stage in the hero. The hero fights for others. The antagonist fights for himself. The hero is willing to die if those he loves live. The antagonist usually finds a way for followers to die for his cause. He himself wants to live to bask in the glory of winning.



Tenth - Gethsame_Golgotha_The Empty Tomb :


Death. Someone dies. Something important dies. In every classic movie, death is the seed that is sown to bring a harvest of redemption to the hero. As the shadows close in around our defeated, dejected hero ...



Eleventh - The Sun Also Rises :


Love usually brings the believed lost partner of the hero back to his side. A moment of joy leads to a revelation of a solution. The lessons learned in the prior pages are brought to bear. The forces of darkness have learned nothing. The hero has learned a great many things. He brings them to his arsenal of weapons. One by one, he and his comrades and his love dispatch the enemy. Until it is just the hero versus his arch-foe. New surprises are thrown at our hero. He takes his hits and keeps coming. He may die, but he will not be defeated. Nor is he.



And The Lines Strikes Twelve - The "World" is changed.


Triumph isn't enough. The world must be drastically changed -- for the hero or for everyone. But changed it is.



Final Image :


It echoes the first image we got in the book. But this image has more depth, brought by the dark colors of death, pain, and revelation. You have made your point in the argument you proposed in the novel's beginning. You know your reader will close your book with a sad sigh at a great experience ended. And maybe, just maybe, if you've done your job right ... your reader will turn to page one again to read your novel with renewed delight at knowing where you are going to take him/her.
*********************
And talking of eagle-eye views, here is a music video that is a life lesson all by itself :

THE DEEPEST WOUND IS LONELINESS_FRIDAY ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

My entry for Francine's and Denise's Friday Romantic Challenge :

FEARFUL HEART.


http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

FEAR.

It comes in many forms. Ask a prison warden what a prisoner fears most, and he will answer : solitary confinement.

Yet, all of us exist in the solitary confinement of our minds --

which leads me to my 400 word entry from the YA urban fantasy, DAYSTAR'S ORPHAN. At the end of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON, Blake Adamson makes a terrible mistake, whose consequence lead to LAST EXIT IN BABYLON.

But it also created a "bubble universe" where his life was rebooted and Fallen, the last fae, has just rescued the 14 year old Blake from DayStar's clutches, mangling him terribly with her long claws in the doing of it :


Fallen crabbed slowly back away from me on her knees, still shaking her head in horror.

"N-No. No! Oh, Blake, I told you I-I'd be a hard friend, but not like this!"

I shrugged, trying to hide how much it hurt, "Show me a rose that doesn't have its share of thorns."

"I'm no rose," whimpered Fallen.

"To me, you're as much a rose as the black roses whose perfume you have in your hair."

Fallen shook her head and, with self-hate in her voice, whispered, "I'm no rose."

"Not a tame one, for sure. But don't you know, Fallen? The wild roses have the sweetest smell."

Her long faerie face all eyes, she said softly, "Your lips just twitched, there, Mr. I-Don't-Lie."

I looked at her with so many warring emotions going at it inside me. Did I dare tell her the truth? I saw the lonely, self-hating hurt in those wet green eyes and knew I didn't have a choice.

"It's ... It's not just when I lie that they do that."

"Then, when else?"

Did I have the nerve to say it? "Ah, well, ... they've been known to do it when ... when -"

"When what?," murmured Fallen, edging closer, her green eyes seeming to swallow my whole world.

"When, ah, I'm ... next ... to a pretty girl."

There, I had said it, and I could feel my cheeks blushing. No. Fallen looked miserable. Man, couldn't I do anything right?

One single tear rolled down her cheek. "B-But that's just it. I'm not pretty. I'm not! I'm not even a girl. You heard DayStar. I'm a frea-"

Her next word I knew would break my heart so I didn't let her finish.

I took both of her hands in mine.

"-a wild, beautiful rose," I said soft, and without even realizing what I was doing until I had gone and done it, lightly kissing her fingers, claws and all.

I stiffened. Oh, man, what had I done? -- oh, no.

Big tears welled up in her jade eyes. She just looked at me for what seemed a frozen eternity. Why did I always screw up? Why?

Then, so fast it was a blur, she bent and kissed me softly on the cheek,looking as shocked as I felt.

My lips not wanting to work right, I knew better than to try and say anything, so I just smiled shyly back.
***
SOON THE DETAILS FOR MY MYSTERY MIRACLE CONTEST WHERE ONE LUCKY PERSON WILL WIN A KINDLE FIRE!

BLACK ROSES IN AVALON!

The LOVE LIKE DEATH trilogy concludes :

Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But eclipses return. And currents exist that are eternal. One such current is Love.

It binds the universe together.

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear him?

Blake, son of Man, is calling out across the night skies. What is he saying?

Remember.

Remember the strangled dreams, the shattered illusions that dropped from your bruised fingers long ago as a child. Still Time can be transcended. If you but remember ...

that love is forever,

that love cannot be taken from you,

that wounded hearts and minds but cast it from them in despair.

Listen.

Listen as Blake tells of haunted Avalon, broken by bloody Civil War. Of his love for the moon and the sun : the Last Fae and the alien drinker of souls.

Listen to his memories of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON :

The orphan, Blake Adamson, has been running for his life … or has he been running from it? One part of his mind says he is delirious, dying in the burnt ruins of his orphanage. Most of his mind insists what he is seeing and enduring is all too real.

His heart wants to believe the world he sees is real. A heart that is torn between an alien drinker of souls and the Last Fae. Loving both the sun and the moon may be his death. But Blake Adamson cannot help himself.

In an attempt to escape the enraged demigod, Abaddon Sennacherib, Blake and Fallen, the Last Fae, have left Victorian London by bending time and space,

using an ancient enchanted blade as a rudder. The two fugitive lovers find themselves far in the past … to Avalon.

Avalon, where life is illusory and deceptive, as are its inhabitants. In Faerie, nothing is as it seems, and even the simple act of uttering a name can be fraught with danger and death.

Blake and Fallen have appeared close to the Crystal Castle at the bottom of Lake Sayrade. The Dancers of the Myst float on their icy blue crafts upon that lake. And their Queen is Danis Nokkes, punisher of all false lovers.

Blake insists he is not false … just over-committed.

The distinction is lost to the sadistic Queen. To the Sidhe, mortals are but toys and pawns in their power games. They love to make the epitaph small and the death large.

In escaping the sadistic Queen, Blake and Fallen clash with the feral Wyldaelfen. And blood and destiny ensues.

In the midst of enemies in Broceliande Forest, they fail to skirt the Shadows of the Erinnyes and their dark queen Dinselle of the Golden Skin.

Atop the King and Queen of Avalon’s unicorns, Blake and Fallen evade the Wild Hunt as they race across the flying boulders of the fabled River Sambayton high in the skies of Avalon.

Until in the crystal and gold palace of Caer Wydr, Blake and Fallen endure the dark ritual, Diathke, ending the Avalon Civil War by paying the fearsome cost for love eternal.
***
http://www.amazon.com/BLACK-ROSES-IN-AVALON-ebook/dp/B005GQN03C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313029711&sr=1-1
***

A DOMINATRIX WET DREAM

"A DOMINATRIX WET DREAM"

is one term Donna Hole uses to describe my novel, LOVE LIKE DEATH.

The entire review of my novel and our email interview is scheduled

to appear in the Tuesday edition of her blog :

http://donnahole.blogspot.com/

Or you can see for yourself :

http://www.amazon.com/LOVE-LIKE-DEATH-ebook/dp/B00560LYHC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1311658166&sr=1-1

Check out Donna's review/interview. You won't be bored. I certainly wasn't. Have a great new week, everyone! Roland

THE PATH BACK TO DAWN!

When we last left Blake Adamson in LOVE LIKE DEATH, he was surrounded by the vicious living shadows, the Amal.

Follow Blake as he is reunited with Kirika, sails the mysterious Sea of Fate, wanders lost down the Halls of Hells, and finally finds Fallen once again in Victorian London --

in the lethal brothel, The Princess Alice, whose only customers are those madmen who have killed as Jack the Ripper.

Worse, the dreaded Sennacherib is coming to fulfil his threat to rape the last fae. Can Blake save himself, much less the fae of his dreams?

If we live long enough, there comes that night when the darkness is more within than without, when we realize things have gone terribly wrong, and when we realize the answers we thought we knew have no more substance than the cardboard fronts of a movie set.

What do we do then?

What if all myths are true? What if believing can make it so, if enough believe? What if, like unwanted children, once born the myths cannot be unborn? Would a critical mass of myths one day be reached?

Only in the eclipse of myth can a young man have both the Moon and Sun as his brides. The Last Fae and The Lost Sun have both fallen in love with Blake Adamson -- and he with them.

If their crossed loves do not them kill them, their enemies surely will. Unless Blake Adamson can become the legend he is believed to be.
***
The lovely twin muses of my novels, Wendy Tyler Ryan and Orietta Rossi {artist extraordinaire}, have made this novel possible.
***
I just love this trailer whose hero and heroine remind me of Sam and Meilori :

SURRENDER TO THE MONSTER_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE given by Francine & Denise is SURRENDER. http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/


My 400 word entry is SURRENDER TO THE MONSTER.

It is from LOVE LIKE DEATH.



{Last Friday, Fallen, to save her love from the dreaded Sennacherib, left Blake to starve chained to a tree.

But evil will not be denied. Sennacherib visits Blake wearing the form of a friend. Blake follows his instructions on how to use his mind to escape the chains.

With unspeakable pain, Blake finds himself free …

of his now lifeless body.

He has become an invisible spirit. Laughing softly, Sennacherib disappears. Then, Blake hears two people approaching through the woods. He hears the furious voice of Philip Darius, Fallen’s only living friend.}



"I can't believe you, Fallen. You left him out here to die?"

" I- I am back."

"Only because I browbeat you. What were you thinking?"

"Of sparing him!"

"Sparing him? By leaving him to die alone?"

“It was about mercy!"

"No, it was about trust."

"Trust?"

"You didn't trust Blake to be able to stand up to Sennacherib."

"You are wrong. I saved him from the hell Sennacherib planned for him."

"Really, Fallen? Maybe this and you were the punishment Sennacherib had planned all along?"

"Wh-What?"

"Think about it. He's actually been happy these past three days."

"Sennacherib would have accused me."

"Why? You did exactly what he planned all along.”

Philip rasped, "I can't think of a worse way to die than to slowly starve with the memory of you saying, ‘Oh, Blake, I do love you. Here, let me leave you here!"

"H-He forgave me."

I heard the slap. "You bitch! I'm sure he did. Pray to God he's still alive."

They broke out of the dense overgrowth into the glade. Philip looked furious. And Fallen? I don’t have the words.

She was dressed in a long black Victorian/fae shroud. No last look at those pretty legs. Her high cheeks were hollow, but not as hollow as her green slanted eyes. Her face brightened as she saw me, ah, my body.

"Blake! Did you really think I would leave ---"

"No!," she screamed.

Philip stood rock still. "My God, Fallen, what have you done?"

Fallen raced to me. She wrapped her arms around my lifeless body.

"B-Blake, it is me. Fallen. I - I came back for you. Oh, God, I came back for you!"

Philip watched coldly as she softly stroked my face. “Please, come back to me. It has only been three days. You cannot be dead."

Philip tore Fallen from my body. Caught by surprise, she fell to the ground. She lay there, staring up at the twisted face of her only friend.

"Get away from him, you piece of filth!"

"P-Philip?"

"I've wasted years looking out for you. I tried to keep Sennacherib from turning you into a monster."

He hung his head. "I give up, Fallen. I surrender to the monster inside you."

"It has not been that long," she wailed.

Philip snapped, "Don’t you get it? He didn't starve to death. He died of a broken heart!"

Fallen whimpered.

***
With Blake, being Blake, it gets even worse for him, Fallen, and Darius. But you'll have to read LOVE LIKE DEATH to find out.

***

FORGIVENESS IS A RAZOR_LOVE LIKE DEATH_FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

It's time for Friday's Romantic Challenge again from Francine and Denise :

FORGIVEN

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My 400 word entry comes from LOVE LIKE DEATH and explains a bit how Blake Adamson was left chained to a tree by Fallen to starve to death.

Prior to this moment, Lerner, the corrupt New Zealand police officer has chained Blake to a tree in the wilderness to torture some secret about Sennacherib (DayStar) from him.

Alas, poor Blake hasn't a single secret to buy his life or a quick death. Just as Lerner is about to use a blow torch on his eyes, Fallen appears behind him, slitting his throat with a mystic fae dagger :

"Thanks for saving me," I said.

Slanted eyes glittered. "Who said I was saving you? It is a fearsome thing to love and be loved by a Sidhe. And it is over before our first kiss."

"K-Kiss?"

Fallen’s lips almost touched mine but pulled back. "I will not make a mockery of our love."

She murmured, "Do you know what Sennacherib would do to you?"

"No."

"You would lose everything : dignity, hope ... innocence."

She traced a design on my chest with her dagger’s point. She stopped at my heart.

"The price of love is always death," I whispered.

"What?"

"Something I once told someone."

"I would thrust now, ending it quickly. But Sennacherib and I are linked."

She sobbed, "Soon you will be dead. Yet I will go on with the dark memory of what I must do tonight."

"Don’t …."

"No, Blake, to spare you, I must kill you. But not cleanly. Sennacherib senses when I kill, and he would come and save you."

She backed away.

"Don't do this to yourself, Fallen."

"To myself? You still love me? Why?"

"Love just is. Fallen, there has to be another way."

“Tell me how you can definitely defeat Sennacherib, and I will go through hell at your side doing it. Oh, tell me!”

"I don't think that there are any 'sure things,' Fallen. Life is short, bitter-sweet, and mostly pain."

"You are not helping your cause."

"Don't you see? Because life is like that, if love ever does come your way, you grab hold, and you never let go.”

Fallen made a soft cry and pressed her body against mine, kissing me, hungry, wild. She kissed as if trying to force all her dark love into one fury of passion. Suddenly, she pulled away.

"Y-You do not know Sennacherib. I have to do this!"

She backed up, never taking her eyes off me. She was at the edge of the clearing. Three more steps, and she would be gone. I had to say something. Something that would help her in the long nights to come.

"Fallen!"

She slowed.

"I ... forgive you."

She hunched over. "Damn you. Damn you!"

She mewed like a hurt kitten. "I love you, Blake. I love you so much I ache with it. I will never kiss another. Never!"

She ran into the dark woods. The chains weren’t as heavy as my heart.
***

from the pages of THE LAST FAE comes LOVE LIKE DEATH

Magic has its price. So does love.

So it is not too surprising that to fall in love with a Sidhe is a fearsome thing.

To also fall in love with a being born of stardust and the sea at the same time is to walk the razor's edge.

Fallen, last of the Tuatha de Danann, fell in love with a strange teenager in THE LAST FAE.

In LOVE LIKE DEATH, Fallen learns his name (Blake Adamson) and more ...

she learns that there is a steep price to trusting your fears over your heart.

And what does Blake Adamson learn?

That it is hard to discern shadow from substance in that twilight realm between death and life where he meets ...

Solomon, the not-panther, who must live by rules that dare not be spoken.

Maija, succubus, who would kill Blake if only she could.

Huginn and Muninn, the two ravens that are the living embodiment of his Id and Ego.

Fallen of the etheral body and predator eyes, whose love wounds.

Kirika, alien born of stardust and the sea, whose love kills.

And DayStar, rumored to be the young teenager fully grown.

{Cover courtesy of the creative genius of that siren from Genoa, Italy, Orietta Rossi. Format and cover font crafted by the talented Wendy Tyler Ryan}

***

THE DEEPEST WOUND IS LONELINESS_NO KISS BLOGFEST ENTRY

My entry for Frankie's NO KISS blogfest

http://frankiediane.blogspot.com/

is from my YA urban fantasy, LOVE LIKE DEATH :

detailing the adventures of the orphan reputed to be the clone grown from the tissue sample taken from the Spear of Destiny.

Helped by the 14 year old fae assassin, Fallen,

the clone, Blake Adamson, has just escaped his captors, though mauled by the claws of Fallen in the doing of it :



Fallen crabbed slowly back away from me on her knees, still shaking her head in horror and dismay.

"N-No. No! Oh, Blake, I told you I-I'd be a hard friend, but not like this. Not like this!"

I shrugged, trying to hide how much it hurt, and forced out of my weak throat, "N-Now, show me a rose that doesn't have its share of thorns."

"I'm no rose," whimpered Fallen.

"Well, to me, you're as much a rose as the black roses whose perfume you have in your hair."

Fallen shook her head and, with so much self-hate in her voice it scared me, whispered in a hiss, "I'm no rose."

"Not a tame one, that's for sure," I sadly smiled. "But don't you know, Fallen? The wild roses have the sweetest smell."

Her long faerie face almost all eyes, she said softly, "Your lips just twitched, there, Mr. I-Don't-Lie."

I looked at her with so many warring emotions going at it inside me. Did I dare tell her the truth? Did I? I saw the lonely, self-hating hurt in those wet green eyes and knew I didn't have a choice.

"It's ... It's not just when I lie that they do that, you know."

"Oh, no? Then, when else, boy scout?"

Oh, man, did I have the nerve to say it? "Ah, well, ... they've been known to do it when ... when -"

"When what?," murmured Fallen, edging closer, her green eyes seeming to swallow my whole world.

"When, ah, I'm ... next ... to a pretty girl."

There, I had said it, and I could feel my cheeks blushing. No. Oh, no. Fallen looked miserable. Man, couldn't I do anything right? Not anything?

One single tear rolled down her cheek. "B-But that's just it. I'm not pretty. I'm not! I'm not even a girl. You heard Tartan. I'm a frea-"

Her next word I knew would break my heart so I didn't let her finish.

I reached out for her, taking both of her hands in mine. I put them next to my chest, hoping she wouldn't notice the blood on both our fingers. I hiked up my left shoulder a bit and smiled sad back at her.

"-a wild, beautiful rose w-who I'm proud to call 'friend'," I said soft, and without even realizing what I was doing until I had gone and done it, lightly kissing her fingers, claws and all.

I stiffened. Oh, man, what had I done? Was I crazy, or what? I had kissed Fallen. Sure, only on the fingers, but -- oh, no.


Look at what I had done. Big tears were welling up in her jade eyes. She just looked at me for what seemed a frozen eternity in time. I started cussing myself up a storm. What a moron. Why did I always screw up? Why?

And then, so fast it was a blur, she bent and kissed me soft on the cheek. She snapped back, looking as shocked as I felt. She cocked her head timid at me.

My lips not wanting to work right, I knew better than to try and say anything, so I just smiled shy back. I could feel my blush burning like a hot neon sign.

"Oh, no!," I cried aloud, dropping Fallen's hands.

"What's wrong?," she yelped, springing to her feet and spinning in a clawed crouch.

"Mr. Myers and Mr. Heke. They're still trapped in the Eldritch Industries Building."

Fallen slowly turned around, her face so sad and bittersweet.

"Blake, Blake. You big, dumb boy scout. You worry about everyone but yourself."

Fallen stamped her right foot angrily. "Blake Adamson, when are you going to start worrying about you?"

I smiled sad, "That's what I've got you for."

"Oooh, Blake, sometimes you make me so crazy!"

I hoped you enjoyed my entry.
***

EVERY GENRE SINGS IN ITS OWN VOICE

"By the Light I would destroy, I can see what I've become."

- DayStar

Every genre sings in its own voice. No two genres begin quite the same way. A murder mystery has a style distinct from a historical romance. An urban fantasy has a faster tempo than a biography.

Not every novel's melody is a waltz nor is its lyrics always Rap.

"Each to his own," said Lars as he kissed his inflatible doll.

As I finished writing the above, I heard the sharp clatter of ice cubes to my left. I looked around. Raymond Chandler was sitting in his ghost chair, drinking his ghost whiskey. He nodded to the ghost bottle and an empty ghost glass on the writing table.

I shook my head politely. Ghost hangovers are murder for the living. Don't ask how I know.

"Genre doesn't matter a publisher's promise, kid. When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature whatever the genre."

He took a sip of ghost whiskey. "That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball."

He gazed off into space. "The readers and the editors think all they care about is the action. They think wrong. They care very little about the action. The things they really care about, and that I care about and you should care about, are the creation of emotion through dialogue and description."

He gestured with his half-empty glass. "I'll prove my point. Give your friends out there the first paragraphs of your different genre novels. Oh, sure, they'll start different. But they'll be the same anyway. They'll all have the creation of emotions that touch the reader."

And who am I to argue with a genius? Especially the ghost of a genius.

I started with RITES OF PASSAGE, my fantasy Titanic mystery/romance, narrated by my haunted hero, Samuel McCord. Since it is set in 1853, I used the stiff formality of the times tempered with the modern sensibilities of today. And since McCord's adversary in it is the living darkness that billowed over the surface of the deep before creation, I started in epic fashion :

{Before time …
Before light ...
Darkness was upon the face of the deep.
The earth was void and without form.
Then without warning …

Light.

The darkness did not comprehend it. But the darkness did not surrender. The darkness is still here. And it wants its home back.}

Chandler knocked on the top of my head as if it were a door. "Hello! Anybody home? Philosophy's not how you begin a novel even if it is a historical fantasy. A hook. You ever hear of that?"

"Let me show you how to do it. Oh, don't pout. Keep your lovely beginning ... for the second paragraph. Start with this"

His ghost fingers flashed across my keyboard.

{I'm not alive. I'm not dead. What am I?

Cursed.}

"There," he gestured with his ghost whiskey glass, splashing intangible liquid on my laptop. "That's how you do it. A good story's not crafted. It's distilled."

I refrained from mentioning how appropriate that was coming from a ghost guzzling whiskey. Never start a fight you can't win. I went on next to my post-Katrina urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE :

{It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats. The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.}

He smiled. "You touched the emotions, made me feel and see what McCord was going through. Good job. Now, show me how your Young Adult novel of new adventures at the same time is different in voice."

I started the beginning paragraph of my YA urban fantasy, CAPTAIN OUTRAGEOUS, told through the eyes of a 12 year old boy, repeatedly abandoned by his mother in diferent cities. He thinks he knows why she does it. He is wrong.

{I was at the wrong end of a dead end alley in the French Quarter. But don't get any romantic images in your head. It was the kind of alley where wino's holed up in to die.

Which was fitting seeing as how I was going to die there.}

Chandler was sitting there with his eyes closed. "Yes, I can see the difference. McCord's a poet trapped into being a policeman. This kid's lived on the street, and it shows in the way he looks at the world and himself."

He opened his pale blue eyes. "You written a fable, haven't you? Show me how the beginning sings in a different voice, and I'll buy your little theory."

So I began to type the beginning of THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS, my Native American/Celtic fable :

{The face of shadows looked down upon the standing bear from a bright full moon. Hers was a face that few had seen and fewer still had lived to describe. Her features were terrible and beautiful beyond any singing of them. There was a haunted melancholy to them. Like a windmill, her memory was slowly turning through the fleeting lives that had been born upon her shores to walk soft across her green fields like prayers only to fade away into the blood-rimmed edge of the sunset.}

"Not bad," he murmured. "Not great. But definitely it sings in its own voice."

His eyes fixed on me. "Kid, don't you ever begin with action?"

"As a matter of fact," I smiled. "There's the beginning for my YA urban fantasy, LOVE LIKE DEATH."

"My kind of title," laughed Chandler.

And I began writing the first paragraphs :

{The fire blinded me as I stumbled through the smoke, my lungs feeling like they were being cooked. Tears stung my eyes and ran down my face. My fault. All my fault. I didn't know how, but I knew it was all my fault. It was always my fault.

My foot banged into something metal, and I was hurled forward into the flames in front of me. I hit the burning rubble hard, my palms rubbed raw by trying to stop my fall. I coughed and coughed until I thought my chest would break open. I blinked my eyes against the layers of hot smoke. A wheelchair. Lilly's wheelchair.

"Oh, God," I choked out through the smoke and fear. "Don't let Webster have killed her, too." }

Chandler frowned. "I did ask for it, didn't I?"

"You have to admit the melody is different."

"Putting a bowtie on a penguin doesn't make him Fred Astaire, kid."

And with that he was gone, but his voice echoed softly all around my head. "Don't mind me, Roland. Keep your innocence, your gusto for writing. The more you learn of the craft, the more devoid of life writing will appear to you. If you're not careful, you'll soon know all the tricks and have nothing left in your soul worth saying."

A low laugh sounded above me. "I like your writing, son. Your characters live in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction. The law is something to be manipulated for profit and power. And the streets are dark with something more than night."

I felt my hair ruffled by invisible fingers. "You'll do, son. You'll do. And so will your friends. They have heart. All the rest can be learned."

Imagine what this post would have been like if I had sipped any of his ghost whiskey.

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

And speaking of hearing voices of famous people in your head, here is the beautiful vocalist, Vienna Teng, telling of how she, too, hears the voices of characters in her head. Amalia will love this song of Medea, the tragic, betrayed lover of Jason who takes a terrible revenge. Vienna talks a bit at the beginning, but stay with this video. Her voice is truly beautiful as is the song which she wrote.

Roland, student of ghosts, here. Raymond Chandler stayed up late most nights, drinking whiskey and writing letters to friends and to those whose letters to him caught his fancy.

Jacques Barzun, the French-born American historian of ideas and culture, was an icon himself, appearing on the cover of TIME magazine.

Barzun wrote of Chandler's letters : "Whether his fiction survives or not, Chandler's letters will be read a long time. He belongs among the permanent letter writers, being like them a great self-portraitist and, in addition, a fine informal critic. Whoever cares for literature and for human character should read the letters of Raymond Chandler."

"I don't know why the hell I write so many letters," Raymond Chandler once mused to a correspondent. "I guess my mind is just too active for its own good."

There is an excellent volume of selected letters from his huge output. THE SELECTED LETTERS OF RAYMOND CHANDLER {not a new copy ($87) but a used hardback ($3.00)} sold on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231050801/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1

Brought together in this volume are some of the hundreds of letters Chandler wrote-many of them composed during long, insomniac nights. Chandler commented on all that he saw around him, from his own personal foibles, to the works of his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and Edmund Wilson, to education, English society, and world events.

Acute, sometimes impassioned, often witty, the Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler contains lively anecdotes of Hollywood, critical dissections of his fellow writers of detective fiction, lengthy discussions of the art of writing and of his own fiction, and, above all, amused, sometimes outraged glimpses of the Southern California society that was his inspiration.

Chandler once wrote that "in letters I sometimes seem to have been more penetrating than in any other kind of writing."

But his letters could also be combative, as when he wrote to an editor at the Atlantic that "when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I intend that it should stay split," or dismissive, as when he said of James M. Cain that "everything he writes smells like a billy goat."

He could also be painfully revealing, as when he wrote of his despair over the death of his wife. "It was my great and now useless regret," Chandler confessed, "that I never wrote anything really worthy her attention, no book that I could dedicate to her."

Lively, entertaining, and sometimes touching, these letters fully present for the first time the complex sensibilities of a man who was one of America's greatest writers of detective novels, and one of its most astute observers.