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Archive for the ‘Storytelling’ Category

Why Writers Help Writers

December 15, 2015

fastest-writer-on-the-world
If Only My Fingers Would Move That Fast.

Writers tend to stick together. I think it’s got something to do with the craft we’ve chosen to pursue. For the most part, it tends to be a rather solitary business, and to a lot of people it looks easy.

“After all,” they say, “all you have to do is write down words.”

Sure. Don’t I wish it was that simple?

Any writer worth his salt (pardon the cliché, but at the moment I’m working on two different novels … plus, it’s the holiday season … who has time to be overly creative?) …

Most of those writers certainly know that good writing (ah, there’s the disclaimer I was looking for … good writing) doesn’t just happen. It takes extraordinary effort.

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”
~ Jack Kerouac

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
~ Ernest Hemingway

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work.”
~ Stephen King

* * * * * * * *

A friend of mine, Evans Bissonette (above), a fellow writer, mentioned a couple of writing groups he attends in the area that are looking for a few new members and, since they provide that writerly help I’m talking about, I told him I’d put his flyer in my next blog.

I’m not normally a fan of critique groups, but I appreciate the idea of writers helping other writers so much that I might be intrigued enough to attend a couple of these sessions myself … because I’m certain I can use the help … not just because Evans is such a nice guy.

Here’s his flyer:

sunset scribes
The email link above, which doesn’t work in the jpeg image of his flyer, is typefont@gmail.com. If you’re interested in either group (or both), be sure to contact them before the end of January.

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My books have all garnered some terrific reviews, and you can see the books I have available by using the Amazon link below.

You’re invited to visit my web site, BROKEN GLASS, or like my Book of Face page. You can also follow my shorter ramblings on The Twitter.

Street Light was just selected by Shelf Unbound as 1 of 100 Notable Books for 2015

The Official Book Trailer for “Street Light”

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Comments posted below will be read, greatly appreciated and perhaps even answered.

Tags:indie writers, self-publishing, storytelling
Posted in Book Promotion, Independent Publishing, Storytelling | 8 Comments »

My Book Signing … and Story Ideas

December 5, 2015

earth The Source of My Ideas

Funny thing about book signings. As active and engaging as I try to be, there is often a lot of time for reflection. Like when you’re just sitting around waiting for someone to show up.

Like today.

It’s never wasted time, however, because it gives you an opportunity to talk to the other authors.

I had an interesting conversation and received a good question about story ideas from one of the young woman writers in attendance with me. Namely, where did mine come from?

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I find ideas everywhere.”

For Instance
I looked up the name of an old friend the other day … Kenny Riddle.* He was a tousle-haired kid from down the block I had known for years, and then lost track of after my family moved.

At one time, he had been one of my best friends. He was also the kid who first made me see stars.

Literally.

He objected to a comment I made about his play-calling during one of our street-tag football games and gave me a punch … smacked me upside the head, as he would have said … and I saw purple stars.

I punched him back and bloodied his nose, and we wrestled each other to the ground. I’m sure the other guys with us were thinking fight! … but a funny thing happened.

As we wrestled around, we quit punching each other and both of us started laughing. Then we helped each other up and went on playing ball, as if nothing had occurred.

I’ve said it before … kids are remarkably resilient beings.

My family moved out of the neighborhood and I lost track of him. After all this time, I had actually pretty much forgotten about him … until my eighty-seven-year-old mother, cleaning out shoe boxes full of old photos, handed me one she couldn’t identify.

“Do you know who this is?” she said.

ken riddle I looked at the insolent kid staring out of that old black and white photo and saw Kenny Riddle.

Standing in the driveway of my old house, his arms were crossed and he was leaning on the hood of my father’s old ’62 Chrysler, with the same smug look on his face as the day I’d told him what a boneheaded play he’d made.

I looked at that picture and, just for a second, in my mind I saw those purple stars again.

Good ol’ Ken. I hadn’t seen him since the summer of 1965. I wondered whatever had happened to him?

I put the photo on the table next to my laptop when I got home, where it got buried in a stack of bills and prescription forms I was saving for the tax-deduction section of my annual IRS filing.

Out of sight, I promptly forgot about it. It stayed in that stack for at least a week, until my lovely bride decided she’d had enough of my paper junk spread all over the kitchen table.

“Please, clean it up,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Ken’s picture was one of the last things I found as I went through the pile. I saw it and wondered again, whatever had become of him?

I decided, just for the heck of it, to Google his name and see what happened. It wasn’t, I thought, an overly common name, so perhaps I’d get lucky and find some way to contact him again after 50 years.

Wouldn’t that surprise him?

To my own surprise, I did find him … right away. But, sadly, there wasn’t going to be any way to talk to him.

What I found was an old obituary notice.

Ken had passed away in 2009. I was six years too late to contact him and renew our old friendship. The only way it might still have been possible was time travel.

At first I was sad.

Then I thought … what if?

————
*name may have been changed to keep him innocent

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My books have all garnered some terrific reviews, and the idea you just read may appear among them soon. If you didn’t make it to the book-signing today, you can still see the stories I have available by using the Amazon link below.

You’re invited to visit my web site, BROKEN GLASS, or like my Book of Face page. You can also follow my shorter ramblings on The Twitter.

Street Light was just selected by Shelf Unbound as 1 of 100 Notable Books for 2015

The Official Book Trailer for “Street Light”

**********

Comments posted below will be read, greatly appreciated and perhaps even answered.

Tags:award-winning writing, storytelling
Posted in Award-Winning Fiction, Storytelling | 2 Comments »

It’s All About Character

October 31, 2015

Witchy Watercolor

It’s Halloween, and I’ve been having a ball watching all the little goblins, demons, caped crusaders and princesses come to the door. The event hasn’t changed a whole lot since I was a kid, and that’s just fine with me.

Some things are just too special to try to improve.

My bride got back into the spirit this year with one of her old junior high friends. The two of them attended a “Witches Night Out” charity affair over in the Joliet area of Chicago.

I have it from reliable sources there were 1300 women in attendance, all dressed in their best witches outfits, raising money for United Way Agencies helping women and children.

They had a ball (no pun intended), and it was fun watching the two of them act like kids again for a few hours.

I keep thinking of those things tonight, as I peer into the darkness, waiting for more little monsters to step into the porch light.

We don’t get as many kids as most of the neighborhood. We live at the top of a hill, on a cul-de-sac with only about a dozen houses. The kids don’t like coming up here, because it’s too hard to get to the rest of the neighborhood from here.

I would have avoided this street, too, when I was a kid.

It’s been a slow night and I imagine we’ve seen just about all the traffic we’re going to. On top of the location, it’s raining and only 45 degrees outside. Not the best weather for little kids to be out.

Sad, in a way.

There’s a scary movie playing on TV in the background, Lady in the Water, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and, with the slow night outside, it started me thinking of the many ways we’ve tried to scare ourselves with movies over the years.

A lot of folks would probably vote for “Nightmare on Elm Street” as one of the scariest movies, but I thought the character of Freddy Krueger was way too predictable.

My choice for two of the scariest movies of all time would have to be the adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Shining” and William Peter Blatty’s chilling “The Exorcist.”

I know many of you will disagree … and that’s fine. We all get entertained (and scared) by different things. Those choices are just my opinion. I liked “The Shining” for its chilling, often baroque journey into madness. Jack Nicholson made the movie.

“The Exorcist” was shocking and blood-chilling, and it remains for me a modern parable of good and evil, which made it far more than a monster movie.

The characters made both books (and both movies). It’s one of the reasons I enjoy Stephen King so much … he always paints memorable characters. Something as a writer I can only try to emulate.

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