Can you ignore the urge to write? Can you ignore a puppy?

how much they love me. Godot showed up to ask if I’d been waiting for him, as did Mr. Goodbar.

Why? Because my agent loves my current WIP (not to be confused with he thinks it’s perfect), the one I spent 14.8 years re-writing, the last time in blood.

Life wasn’t always like this. Fifteen years ago, I had no idea it would take me so f*** long to achieve one scrawny, measly dream, or that I’d go through so many prequels to what would finally be The Book. The question that intrigues most writer friends (and the one I ask each time one of them launches their book) is how did I get here? What’s the good and bad that made my writing work–and not work? I hate analyzing myself–for me, introspection is as much fun as going to the opera. I write. I edit. I rewrite. I don’t think deep thoughts about who I am or where my existential self is going. Sure, I’ve been told by my toxic critique group and a few well-meaning friends that I don’t ramp up the drama fast enough for a thriller (my chosen genre). My characters’ motivations aren’t believable. The stakes aren’t high enough even after the thirteenth rewrite. Or the fourteenth.

Or the fifteenth.

Many times, I felt like a violin in a marching band.

But what I do well as a writer is I never give up. I don’t know the meaning of that phrase. How does one ‘give up’? I tried to after the failure of Book #1, the soul-seering paleo-historic biography of pregnant Lucy, trying to survive in a world that had stacked the deck against her. No one–I mean no one–found it appealing. Not agents, not my family, and most pointedly, not my annoying critique group (though they’ve never liked a thing I wrote). Since I took up writing to tell Lucy’s story, I decided to quit.

That didn’t work. How does one put down the pen after experiencing the exhilaration of finishing an entire novel? I read forty-six books, cleaned my house, even tried shopping, but eventually ended up back in my office, in front of my computer, peering out the 8×8 window my husband had installed precisely so I could ruminate while the waterfall in our backyard tumbled endlessly downward. I started a cathartic blog on the doomed Lucy, then one on writing, wrote a few ebooks (they are doing nicely) and a few more, and stumbled on some ezines that wanted me to write for them (like Write Anything).

And found a new twist on man’s timeless struggle to survive despite daunting odds. Thoughts buzzed like dive bombers. Characters bloomed and withered. A dramatic piece of a friend’s life fit perfectly into a new plot line and my first thriller was born. No one liked it, but that didn’t stop me. I was on a roll. Isn’t the myth it takes three books to make it? I wrote my third novel.

Which everyone liked, including an agent. That’s cool. I like having someone believe in me besides my husband and my tail-wagging, ear-flopping dog.

Now I take up residence in my office every day after work, write until 9ish with a thirty minute dinner break, go to bed, wake up, go to work and start over. Weekends, too, except not the ‘go to work’ part. I never get tired or tongue tied or washed out. If I get depressed, I throw a trauma at my main character and let her be depressed.

I have learned a few things along the way.

• When push comes to shove, push back.
• Reality is a word that has no place in fiction.
• Sometimes my plot passes the middle of nowhere hours before I notice I’m lost. That’s OK. I pull my outline out.
•  Life has lots of bombshells and few foxholes.
•  Verbize or (fill in the blank–we’re authors. We’re allowed to be neologists) is a word the world’s been crying out for.
• The only thing Vince Flynn and I have in common is neither of us were raised by wolves and both of us were unpublished at one point.
• When I can barely hear the whistle on my train of thought, I take a break.
• Editing is like walking through the Sahara in the middle of summer in tight shoes without a hat, or water.
• Though I’ve been told my writing is lousy, not by anyone of consequence
• When I realize my story arc belongs on a milk carton, it’s time to re-evaluate.
• I channel my muse when my hero’s motivation disappears as though sucked up by a Hoover. That happens at least once a week.
• Sometimes I write my best scenes when I feel lousy. Go figure.
• I have moments I wonder if God has invented the day I’ll finish my novel

And you never forget your first rejection.

Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth 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 and Technology in Education. 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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Q:  I don’t know what I did, but my computer doesn’t run right anymore. What can I do?

A:  With access to the internet, computer malfunctions have become even more prevalent than ever. Sometimes you download a program–or your child mistakenly pushes a button that allows malware on your computer. Suddenly, through no fault of your own, things just aren’t working right anymore.

This is so common that Microsoft has a program called System Restore on every computer with Windows operating system. System Restore is a utility that allows users to restore their Windows configurations to a previous state. While System Restore is often associated with providing recovery when driver or software installations go awry, it can really shine when spyware or other malevolent software compromises user machines. In many situations, this handy utility can roll back afflicted machines to a completely uninfected state. Of course, System Restore can work only when it is turned on and cataloging system states, so make sure it’s enabled on all user machines.

Here’s what you do:

• Type ‘system restore’ into the search bar at the bottom of the start menu
• Select ‘system restore’ from the list
• Follow the directions

That’s it. It’s painless. It doesn’t affect any data files created at any time, just system files that may have been corrupted or affected unintentionally by malware, spyware or their ilk.

Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I’ll answer it within the next thirty days.

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth 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 and Technology in Education. 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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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.

Before fame claimed him as a writer, five-times married (and divorced) Henry Miller’s work experience included a bellboy, garbage collector, cement mixer, gravedigger, employment manager at Western Union, employee at Park Department in Queens, manager of New York City speakeasy, and proofreader on the Paris edition of The Chicago Tribune. After a full and long eighty years of life, he summed up his goals in this way:

“(My) ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea.” 

Today, he is best known as the controversial American author of numerous books, including the sexually-explicit Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, shared what he considered to be the Ten Commandments of writing (originally published in Henry Miller on Writing). See if you agree:

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to the program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people; go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it–but go back to it the next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth 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 and Technology in Education. 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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by Michael Harvey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Michael Harvey’s debut novel (Chicago Way) turned into a fast-moving sometimes dark TV series (now cancelled) introducing outspoken Chicago PI-and-ex-cop, Michael Kelly. We All Fall Down (Knopf 2011) is Kelly’s first novel I have read and I am enthusiastically placing the other three on the top of my book pile.

The plot revolves around bioterrorism, pathogens are released in the Chicago Subway via exploding light bulbs. The effects are dramatic and deadly and we learn of new strains of terror referred to as “black biology”. The Government is forced to quarantine large parts of the city as hospitals turn into morgues. Michael, with clever, aggressive and highly perceptive insights into this threat, begins to hunt the perpetrators while protecting the scientists desperately seeking the vaccine.

Michael Harvey is a brilliant writer (no wonder his first book became a TV series) the pacing races from page to page yet allows the plot and the characters to fully develop. The story lines blend perfectly and are all to real as civilization struggles with WMD terrorist nightmare. Mr. Harvey has written 4 novels, I hope there are many more to come.

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth 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 and Technology in Education. 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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Twenty-four Days to stop them.

working, non-stop efforts to prevent dire consequences regardless the personal pain or innate impossibility of the task. It’s my life. Never easy, but always worth it.

There are thousands of thrillers. If they were a favorite tshirt, they’d be torn across the sleeve and now used as a dust rag. To set myself apart, I added a twist: intelligence. My POV characters are blindingly smart (which takes a lot of research on my part), problem-solvers, never happier than when their asked to untangle a mobias strip of disconnected clues. I’ve been accused of being ‘too complicated’, but not by anyone of consequence. All I care is my agent likes the approach and he’s the one who will take it to publishers.

My current series relies on technology (I’m a tech teacher) and science for the wow factor. There are some amazing inventions out there that will shake up our world when extrapolated to their inevitable conclusion. Star Trek used this science to drive their success and much of what they hypothesized twenty years ago is now reality. My science is similar–based on real life, but not quite there yet. Think Jurassic Park.

There in lies my challenge: To explain complicated science in a way people will not only understand, but buy into.

My current WIP has a working title of Twenty-four Days. It is a high concept novel written in the spirit of Jack DuBrul and is peopled with imaginative characters—human and digital–who must beat a ticking clock or face a disaster that will upend their world. As my query letter summarizes:

Navy SEAL-turned-world-renowned paleoanthropologist Zeke Rowe is called back to action when two nuclear submarines are hijacked while testing a secret weapon developed by a British-American coalition. The evidence points to Salah Al-Zahrawi, a dangerous terrorist Rowe himself had killed a year ago. Rowe solicits the aid of his girlfriend, Kali Delamagente, a brilliant researcher who knows Al-Zahrawi better than anyone, and her AI–a quirky mechanical creature who likes to be called Otto and claims to be able to follow a digital trail anywhere there is a computer connection.

In a matter of hours, Otto finds the first sub and it is neutralized, but he can’t find the second one before it destroys a cruise liner and attacks two American warships.

Click to be notified when "Twenty-four Days' is available

Piece by piece, Rowe uncovers a bizarre nexus between Al-Zahrawi, a North Korean communications satellite America believes to be a nuclear-tipped weapon, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser tasked with supervising the launch.

And a deadline that expires in twenty-four days.

As the world teeters in the crosshairs of one of the most dangerous platforms of nuclear war in the world, Zeke finally realizes that Al-Zahrawi’s goal isn’t the destruction of North Korea’s neighbors, but much more personal.

Twenty-four Days climaxes with a modern-day Naval battle. Because America hasn’t been in a sea battle since WWII, our current weapons technologies have never been battle tested. So I doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. I hope that appeals to military thriller fans.

That’s this week. By next week, when my agent’s comments arrive, I may have to shake everything up.

BTW, if you’d like to be notified when Twenty-four Days is ready, click here.

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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 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.

Q: I have Windows 7 and I can’t find Explorer anymore. Where did it go?

A: Right click on the start button and select ‘Explore’.

DOS is a lot harder to find. Type ‘command prompt’ into the search field and it’ll pop up.

I still miss DOS…

Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I’ll answer it within the next thirty days.

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth 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, an Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, an 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.

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 a huge bookshelf of self-help books for writing. If I get stuck, I roll my chair around to face my floor-to-ceiling shelves and explore tips from Donald Maass, Bob Mayer, Strunk and White, James Frey on my problem-du-jour. These books are a wealth of information and take a long time to digest. I thought I’d take a few of my favorites and distill their highlights.

Literary agent Donald Maass is also the author of more than 16 novels. I must admit, I’ve read none of those, but have devoured his thoughts on how to write. I’ve reviewed both Writing the Breakout Novel (Writers Digest Books 2001) and The Breakout Novelist: Craft and Strategies for the Career Fiction Writer. These next nine tips are from the former. There’s just too much in two books to cover in one post:

•  When novelists whose previous work merely has been admired suddenly have books vault onto the best-seller lists or even achieve a large jump in sales, publishing people say they have ‘broken out’.
• I first came to my conviction that the techniques of breakout storytelling can be learned around the moment that I first met one of my best clients…

• Writing the breakout novel is… the habit of avoiding the obvious or of covering familiar ground, and instead reinforcing the conviction that one’s views, experience, observation of character and passion for chosen story premises can be magnified and pushed so one’s novels achieve new levels of impact and new degrees of originality
• To survive in today’s book publishing industry, it is not good enough just to get published (as true today as ten years ago when Maass first wrote those words)
• Most authors commit to story premises instinctively. Their gut tells them this is the one. There is nothing wrong with that, except the gut can sometimes be mistaken. It cannot hurt to subject your breakout premise to a little scrutiny.
• The key ingredients I look for in a fully formed breakout premise are 1) plausibility, 2) inherent conflict, 3) originality, and 4) gut emotional appeal.
• If there is one single principle that is central to making any story more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes
• Relegate setting to the backseat or make it the chassis on which everything else rides, but do not ignore it.
• …if you do not have a moment of unexpected tragedy or grace in your novel, …consider where you might put it in

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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by James Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American author James Thompson’s Helsinki White (G.P. Putnam Sons 2012) is as much about Finnish politics as it is about heroine, crime,  and catching the bad guys with unorthodox methods. What caught my attention when I selected the novel was that it’s based in Finland, a country that isn’t often the setting for detective stories, and it’s told from the first person present tense of Inspector Kari Vaara, a Finnish law enforcement officer. I know nothing about what drives Finland’s government, economics or culture, so was fascinated by this peek behind the curtains. Since Vaara is married to an American, I got explanations throughout the story of what was Finnish and how it differed from America.

Briefly, Vaara is asked to lead a black ops group tasked with turning the tide of a crime wave sweeping the country. Funding for this endeavor comes from money they steal from the criminals. The only rule: Succeed. There are no limits on how. Vaara’s rogue group is so successful and so discreet that the criminals start fighting each other in an effort to stop the crime busters. This escalates and sparks political consequences that were never imagined when the group was formed. As the personal danger increases, Vaara realizes that his only way out is to solve the political roots and hope he survives.

Much of the book deals with a graphic display of the violence and racial hatred that were both cause and result of the group’s operations. I was startled by how far Vaara veered from ‘legal’ to catch his bad guys. I would have found it hard to believe a law enforcement officer could swing that far to the dark side except that Thompson set Vaara up early in the story with a brain injury that erased his emotions, and conceivably his conscience. As a result, the book offers some intriguing insights into the human condition–”Nothing has intrinsic meaning. We give meaning to the things important to us”. Plus, the story’s supporting characters are fully as warped as Vaara becomes, reveling in the crime and violence they commit without any barometer for how far off center they are. Overall, these characters are not the sort I would hang out with. Vaara seems to figure out that he’s gone too far when he says,

“So, between January 26th, the day I asked Kate [his wife] if I could become a more effective cop, a man empowered to truly help people by bending the rules of engagement in the war against crime, and today… I’ve gone from, if not a paragon of virtue, a cop who mostly observed the rules governing my profession, to a man who has no qualms about breaking any law, committing almost any act, to achieve my own ends.”

As the book progresses, it focuses more on the racism that seemed to be drowning Finland. Though Vaara isn’t racist, he does an expert job of sharing the vileness of the extreme xenophobic Finnish groups and enveloping you in their evil taste and feel.

Overall, this is a unique approach to the noir crime stoppers genre, made even more so by a strong author with the ability to weave a fast-moving, intricate plot that never lets you go. I recommend it, with the reservation that its themes are in-your-face. If you’re weak of stomach, you might want to skip 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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