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Bloodland: A Novel

by Alan Glynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

British author Alan Glynn’s third thriller “Bloodland” (Picador 2011) is about a rising star who’s death captures the imagination of the nation (if not the world). The fun begins when struggling journalist Jimmy Gilroy is asked by a publisher to write her story. He is warned off by people he respects which makes him dig into her death to find out why powerful people would want her story stopped.

What he finds is a vast conspiracy that almost destroys him.

The most appealing part of what might otherwise be a mundane story (beautiful starlet dies in a car crash, nation feeds on the story–think Princess Diana) is the author’s voice. It is a mix between a somewhat dark stream of consciousness and a non-formulaic approach to the wild ride of a thriller. It kept me reading despite the wealth of characters I had to sort through and the complexity of the plot Glynn wove. It made me wish I had the ebook so I could search. If not for the back summary, I don’t think I could have followed it.

But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman.  She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Last week, I reviewed Toxic Feedback, a discussion on how harmful the negative opinions of well-meaning people can be to writers. This next is a great follow-up, sent to me by one of the members of my writers’ critique group. To have your writing flailed by the man whose picture likely appears next to the dictionary definition of ‘Writer’ might convince you to end your career. Lucky for us, James Fennimore Cooper either never read it or shook it off as the rantings of a jealous colleague:

Mark Twain’s Critique of The Deerslayer

So peeved was Mark Twain by critics’ acclaim of The Deerslayer that he unspooled them with delightful attention to detail.  Twain said, “In the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115.”  And:

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction—some say twenty-two. In The Deerslayer, Cooper violated seventeen of them. These seventeen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.
2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
3. They require 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. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.
6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo’s case will amply prove.
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.
8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.
9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.
10.  They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.
11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer this rule is vacated.

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As a working technology teacher by day (writer by night), I get hundreds of questions about using technology in writing. Tech Tips for Writers is a weekly post answering those questions. I’ll cover issues friends have shared, I’ve experienced or questions from readers. They’re always brief and always focused. Feel free to post a comment about what you the writer hate about technology.

Q: My desktop icons (those little pictures that allow you to open a program) are all different. What happened?

A: I get this question a lot. Push the start button and check who the log in is. That’s the name at the top of the right-hand side of the start menu. It should have your log-in name. Any other, log out and log in as yourself and the world will tilt back to normal.

This happens a lot in my lab because I have separate log-ins for different grades. Students being students often forget to log out. I teach even the youngers how to check for this problem and solve it.

Truth be known, lots of adults have this problem, also. They’re used to sitting down at a computer they share only with themselves. When tech comes and does something on it–say, fixes a problem–and they don’t log out, my teachers are also lost

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Great tips for soon-to-be great writers

When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

I have read several of James Frey’s how-to books on writing–How to Write a D*** Good Novel and How to Write a D*** Good Thriller. Although I write thrillers (and I’ll get one published if I ever get the rewrites done for my agent), there are a lot of general rules about constructing novels that apply across the board whether you write thrillers, romance, YA or novelettes. Frey points these out in a pithy concise manner that even those of us with short attention spans can get. Here are some of my favorites from his 176-page book, How to Write a D*** Good Novel:

• “For most writers, and certainly all beginning writers, character biographies are a necessary preliminary step in the making of a novel.”
• Even though “Human beings sometimes do foolish things… All of your central characters, both protagonists and antagonists, should at all times be clever and efficient in handling the problems you have presented them.”
• quoting Raymond Hull: “The strength of the conflict is not just a product of the protagonist’s strength” but is a product of the “strength of the opposition” as well
• “The art of writing the dramatic novel is the art of holding the reader gripped in a slowly rising conflict.”
• “Does every dramatic story have a premise [a statement of what happens to the characters as a result of the core conflict in the story]? Yes… There is no formula for finding a premise. You simply start with a character or a situation, give the protagonist a dilemma and then meditate on how it might go. Let your imagination run.”
• “A story is a narrative of consequential events involving worthy human characters who change as a result of those events. In a dramatic story, the only kind generally worth reading, the characters will struggle.”
• “Where…do you start your narrative of consequential events involving worthy human characters? Usually, you begin just before the beginning.”
• “Aristotle said in the Poetics that the length of a drama should be such that the hero passes ‘by a series of probably or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune.’ Twenty-three centuries later, Egri says the same thing when he insists that a character should ‘grow from pole to pole.’ A coward becomes brave, a lover becomes an enemy, a saint becomes a sinner–this is growth from pole to pole.”
• “Think of a climax as the target and the rest of your story as the flight of the arrow.”

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman.  She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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It’s that time of year again–for the fourth year. Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (a cozy ABNA to us repeaters) is taking submittals starting January 23th and ending when they get 5,000 or Feb. 5th–whichever arrives first .

In the world of writing contests, there are a few details that set this one apart:

• There is no entry fee. If you’ve entered contests in hopes of getting feedback to muscle up query letters, the cost of this approach quickly spirals out of control. ABNA skips entry fees, provides no comments until quarter finals. To me, that makes sense. If it’s not good enough to get through, then agents won’t be interested anyway
• Submittals are read primarily by Amazon Top Reviewers, not professionals. I have no judgment on that; just throwing it out there
• Two Grand Prize winners of a full publishing contract with Penguin.
• You can’t enter a published novel, but you can enter a self-published novel. That’s unique.

So, are you inspired? You must have a completed novel (which I do). Here are other requirements:

• The full/complete version of your manuscript must be between 50,000 and 150,000 words (check)
• The Excerpt must be between 3,000 words and 5,000 words (check)
• A pitch statement (cover letter/summary) must not be longer than 300 words (check)
• Other registration information such as name, contact information, book title (check)
• You cannot win if you don’t appear at the awards ceremony. This entails a 3-5 day trip. Interesting detail, innit?

Here’s a list of contestants who were published subsequent to entering this contest. It’s impressive. It would seem that although only one person can win, contestants with strong novels get noticed and snagged by publishers.

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Blowout

by Byron L. Dorgan and David Hagberg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Even if Amazon Vine hadn’t sent Byron Dorgan and David Hagberg’s Blowout (Forge 2011) to me to review, I would have read it because of Hagberg’s name. His stories are always good reads with fast-paced plots, well-defined characters and enough surprises to keep me turning pages. With titles like Kill Zone, Assassin, and Twister, readers know their about to loose a couple of days of their lives to reading.

But I almost quit on him this time. To get to the good stuff, I had to endure lectures on global warming I’ve already read in too many newspapers and detailed science coming from the mouths of characters I wasn’t sure I trusted. Global warming is politically-charged enough that just discussing it will make you love or hate the character. And Hagberg-Dorgan made that Shakespearean mistake (remember: Me thinks he doth protest too much) of trying to convince me for page after page (after page) that the country’s energy policies were as screwed up as an earthworm in the wrong hole. If I agreed with him, he’s preaching to the choir. If I disagreed, he’s making me angry.

Finally–after eighty pages–Hagberg-Dorgan settled into the story line and I met the main character.

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There. I’ve done it. I told you I’m a writer. Wow. That was harder than it sounds. I’ve never told the world. Most people think I’m a tech teacher or Meaghan’s Mom or Sean’s

I am a writer. I write.

Colleague or The Neighbor They Never See. I am all that–don’t get me wrong–but now I’m also

a

writer.

The thing about saying it out loud is, it’s done. I can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. Now, I AM a writer, no matter how I make money to pay my bills.

It feels good to say it. And after forty+ years of knowing myself, I can tell you it fits. I graduated from college and got an office job and became an office manager, then bought a dance studio–boy that was hard work. 24 hour days and then I lost it to a crook.

Let’s skip that part.

Bruised and battered, but it’s hard to stay down if you’re basically a positive person so I got a husband and an MBA and two children two dogs and a two-story house and a job I don’t remember and then rose through the ranks and became a high-priced manager responsible for installing cell phone antennas on rooves

…then my mom got sick.

And died.

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As a working technology teacher by day (writer by night), I get hundreds of questions about using technology in writing. Tech Tips for Writers is a weekly post answering those questions. I’ll cover issues friends have shared, I’ve experienced or questions from readers. They’re always brief and always focused. Feel free to post a comment about what you the writer hate about technology.

Q: My internet toolbar disappeared. All I see at the top of the screen is, more of the page I’m on. No tools. What do I do?

A: Push F11. You can hide the internet toolbar or unhide with F11. It’s that simple.

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Great tips for soon-to-be great writers

When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

When your manuscript is polished, your query letter honed to perfection and you’re ready to contact agents about representing your baby, you still aren’t done. Each agent you contact will have unique requirements, personal favorites as to how to oil your manuscript so it slips smoothly through the gears of their application process. Trust me as a veteran of the query process–they’re all different. Visit an agent’s website. Check out their requirements before submitting. Spend the time to make each contact personal to the agent’s requirements, area of expertise, and current successful publications.

Here’s an example of what  3 Seas Agency requires. They’re good basic rules that make sense when seeking representation:

In General:

1. Your manuscript needs a header on each page. It should include the title, the author’s name and the page number. (Note: If you wish, the page number can be inserted at the bottom of the page.)
2.  Make sure your entire book flows.
3. Avoid overuse of flashbacks.
4.  A slow-moving beginning turns off agents and editors. Write a beginning hook to suck in the reader. Use action rather than narrative.
5.  Make sure the climax isn’t resolved too easily. Be certain to tie up all loose ends that may have drifted throughout your story.
6.  Double-check for grammatical errors, such as misspelled or repeated words and sentence structure.
7.  Do not use unusual words more than once in your entire manuscript. A reader will remember them and be pulled out of the story if you repeat them.

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A year ago, I was very excited about the launch of the Google Ebookstore. It was long-awaited and hopefully a viable outlet for ebooks of all kinds including Androids, iPhone, iPad, Nook, Sony and the Web. All in one place. Doesn’t that sound scintillating?

My publisher added my books…

Google Books Version of my Book

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Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive

by Joni B. Cole

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to admit, when I heard Joni Cole had asked Write Anything (a writers group I’m involved with) to review her book Toxic Feedback (University Press of New England, 2006)–an elemental discussion on how to give and take criticism, I was looking forward to reading it. I just finished the final edit of my current thriller ( is it ever really final in the writing world?), which meant I no longer had to submit to the well-intentioned-but-depressing opinions of my writer’s group Don’t get me wrong–I love these people. They spend a lot of time helping me get better. But OMG it’s painful! They don’t understand how to provide positive critiques–the type that motivate a writer to do better and not give up. Every time I’ve been the bulls eye of their reviews, I’ve come home swearing to never write again. There are two possible reasons: 1) the members don’t know how to critique, or 2) I don’t know how to accept criticism.

Or both. Who knows? Either way, when this opportunity showed up in my email box, I figured the Universe was talking to me.

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As a working technology teacher by day (writer by night), I get hundreds of questions about using technology in writing. Tech Tips for Writers is a weekly post answering those questions. I’ll cover issues friends have shared, I’ve experienced or questions from readers. They’re always brief and always focused. Feel free to post a comment about what you the writer hate about technology. 

Q:  I was working on my program (writing in Word or making a slideshow in PowerPoint) and it disappeared. Did I lose all my work?

A:  Before you arrive at that decision, try these two steps:

• Check the taskbar. Is your program sitting down there, blinking at you? If it is, click on it to maximize it. Now, all should be OK.
• If the program is closed, re-open the same program. If it’s Word, PowerPoint, Publisher or Excel, a panel shows up on the left prompting you to select one of the auto-saved documents. Pick yours. The program automatically saves every two to ten minutes. You’ve lost some, but not much of your work

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Great tips for soon-to-be great writers

When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

I have never wanted to write like Pulitzer Prize Winners Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, or William Faulkner,. The style doesn’t fit me. Not to say I wouldn’t love to win one of the world’s most prestigious writer awards–who wouldn’t?–but I don’t think I can make the compromises to my personal voice to fit into that square hole.

I didn’t understand why until I read Joe Bunting’s article on what characterizes that style of writing (see below). You may see yourself in them. That’s good. There’s room for all of us under the authorial umbrella. If you want more information, click through and read his article. You’ll love it:

We all know there are novels and then there are “literary” novels. When you read Margaret Atwood, it just feels different than when you read Tom Clancy. And for some reason, these literary novels are the ones that win all the most prestigious awards like the Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Just a reminder to check out the second of my twice-monthly posts at a wonderful writer’s blog called Write Anything. We’re an eclectic group over there with a bit of everything that relates to writing.

Now back to my regularly scheduled postings…

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WP did a great job summarizing my stats for this year. Allow me to share them with you:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE’s Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s seeking representation for a techno-thriller Any suggestions? Contact Jacqui at her writing office, WordDreams, or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Since I started this blog thirty months ago, I’ve had almost 360,000 visitors–more than double last year, 1300 on my busiest day, visiting the 520 articles I’ve written on

Top 10 hits and misses for 2011

every facet of writing. As with most bloggers, I write what’s on my mind 3-4 times a week. It may be about the craft of writing, trends in the industry, or how my writing business is doing. I have regular features, like Tech Tips for Writers and Writing Tips. It’s a fast changing writing world. I’m just trying to hang on and share the ride.

It always surprises me what readers find to be the most provocative–as surprising as what holds no interest for anyone but me! It’s usually a post I put heart and soul into, sure I was sharing Very Important Information, and I get three readers who slog their way through it. Talk about humility. Here they are–my top 10 and bottom 10:

Top Ten Hits

1. How to Describe Dogs–almost double last year’s top post which included a creepy picture of a spider bite. Yuck!
2. My Character is Sick–How to Show (Not Tell) Some Illnesses–need a disgusting illness for your character? Click here.
3. Ten Favorite Geek Words–Part I–vocabulary is far more popular than I ever thought it would be–especially geek words. Maybe techno-thrillers re making a comeback
4. Do You Have a Character Who’s a First Lady?–I think this one got a lot of non-writer hits from people seeking info on Michelle Obama
5. 178 Ways to Describe Women’s Clothing–I learned a lot writing this post, so I’m not surprised readers were curious
6. How To Write Descriptions People Want to Read: Wild Animals
7. How To Write Descriptions People Want to Read: Horses
8. How to Show (Not Tell) an Emotion–A to D
9. How to Tell if Someone is Lying: Body Language
10. How To Describe Your Character’s Appearance

Overall, the craft of writing articles were more popular than the business end of the job.

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The House at Sea’s End

by Elly Griffiths

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I hadn’t agreed to review Elly Griffiths’ The House at Sea’s End (Houghton Mifflin 2011), I might have stopped reading after a handful of pages, but I did promise so I read on. By page seven, that turned out to be a good decision.

You see, the first six pages were more like the character-centric and emotion-driven writing of literary fiction than the action-intensive plot I’d expect from an author who won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for an outstanding suspense novel. Nothing grabbed me by the throat–until the ambivalent, happy-go-lucky troupe of archaeologists Griffiths chose for her opening scene uncovered dead bodies and called the police. Then, finally, I knew I had the right book.

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Beyond losing weight, quitting smoking, paying more attention to my family, here's what I want to do

New Years–a time for rest, rejuvenation and repair. A time to assess ourselves. Do we settle into our life, enjoy where it’s headed, or is it time to grab our purse, our iPhone, our car keys, and get out of there?

Last year on New Year’s Day, I shared my resolutions for 2011. Here’s how I did:

Fiction

• Finish my current techno-thriller, Seek and Destroy (although I haven’t settled on a title). I’m in the editing phase. I got a lot done over my two week Christmas break, but not enough. I have another break in February and March, but that won’t be enough, so I’m looking at summer. Unfortunately, I have a writer’s conference in February and Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in January. I’m not ready. I don’t know what to do.  Finished.
• Market Seek and Destroy when it’s finished–this summer. I have a few people interested. I know (aka, hope) one of them will grab it.  I’m done sending it out. Now, I’ll see if anyone is interested.
• I have a historic fiction novel, Part I of a series, that deals with paleo times. I’m thinking of jumping into the ebook market with it. I can upload to Smashwords, get them on Apple, Kindle, other ereaders. If nothing else, I’ll learn about ebook publishing, which I can share with you. Check out this year’s resolutions.

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As a working technology teacher by day (writer by night), I get hundreds of questions about using technology in writing. Tech Tips for Writers is a weekly post answering those questions. I’ll cover issues friends have shared, I’ve experienced or questions from readers. They’re always brief and always focused.

Q: I’m writing a very (very) important paper and all of a sudden, the screen is frozen. I can’t save it, or anything else. What do I do?

A: Programs do freeze for no reason sometimes, but not often (I’m assuming you take care of your computer–defrag, don’t download with abandon, update it occasionally). Before you declare a dog-ate-my-homework sort of catastrophe, try this:

• Check your desktop for an open dialogue box and close it. You might have to answer its question first.
• Push escape four times. You might have inadvertently got yourself into something you don’t even know you’re in. Escape often lives up to its name.
• Click your program on the taskbar. You might have gotten out of it by accident.

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Just a reminder to check out my twice-monthly post at a wonderful writer’s blog called Write Anything. We’re an eclectic group over there with a bit of everything that relates to writing.

Now back to my regularly scheduled postings…