DIRTY DEEDS - Mystery/Suspense Author's Advice

Life doth slow a writer down...

2011-06-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Life oft times gets in our way, we sorry bunch of storytellers. There are newborns you have to go see, family reunions, picknics, parades, funerals, hospital visits as well as holidays. We are expected on holidays.

As writers who cherish every moment of time we have to write, we find the less time we have to write, we get more written. That sound like a paradox to you? But think of it, too much time on our hands and what do we do with it but fritter it away? Less time we have, generally speaking, the better we schedule and stick to said schedule. Scheduling time to write is really key to getting pages stacked up and eventually fit for editing and rewriting.

Lately, I have had so many distractions and problems thrown at me by life that a series of monkey wrenches are making it impossible to schedule time, so now I have to grab time wherever and whenever I can.

I embarked on the writing of Bismarck 2013 - tentative title. I have a whopping seventeen single-spaced pages completed, some four or five scenes. I am feeling pretty good about the quality (as I edit in the process of re-reading up to where I left off, then go forward), but not too thrilled with the quantity at this juncture.

While outside forces beyond my control have reduced the time I have had to work on the book, another outside force is working from within--the simple knowledge that I know I don't know enough...that I need to do far more research, and that I need to buckle down for that, despite the fact I want to jump into the writing. This has always been a problem with me--more anxious to do the story than the research behind the story.

Don't get me wrong. I love reading and researching my topics but the story is bursting to get out of me and onto the now proverbial page which is now a screen and not a page. The story wants be told, and the story does in fact dictate far more so than research, and that is as it should be. No matter what the backdrop for the human drama is, it needs remain as backdrop and not take over or overtake the story itself. If that happens, you need to be writing for Encylopedia Britanica, non-fiction and not fiction. Dramatic writing dictates the story comes first. Good example is the now 75 year-old classic Gone with the Wind. It is not about the Civil War. It is about Scarlet O'Hara as another Perils of Pauline tale; the burning of Atlanta and the War Between the States just happens around her.

So these are the issues revolving around the opening scenes of Bismarck for me right now. I will see to it these issues and this all important balance gets worked out. In the meantime, the pages I placed up earlier as openers have entirely been overhauled. Rest assured some pages are getting done despite the hassles of life's intrusions--some of which must take precedence over pushing the new novel along.

I blogged at http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/ for my weekly article there on the Creative Process and how very Mystical and Magical it truly is and how it all comes down to we authors having OCD--obsessive compulsive disorder. I think that is part of the tussle to want to get underway with the story despite a feeling of needing to do more research at the same time. Two sides of the brain at war but then a story is a war and an author is its combatant. After all, with my Titanic 2012 and now Bismarck 2013, I am embarking on a new subcategory of suspsense--seafaring suspense.

Rob Walker
Titanic 2012, Children of Salem, and more...

Yet Another Ambitious Seafaring Suspense Novel?

2011-05-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Last year beginning around Feb., I began TITANIC 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic, and I tried to do my best to keep a running blog or log or diary of progress, success, failures, steps going forward, steps going back...various stages of development of the novel and a running commentary....

Well now after the success of completing TITANIC and now that it has been up for sale on Kindle for some time, I went seeking a new project that was equal to the task of being on a par with Titanic, as I feel Titanic, my Titanic with its various layers, interesting characters, and its new theory of the crime that absolved the iceberg and took Capt. Edward Smith off history's shady pedestal.

So where to go, what to do... After taking a break from the heavy-duty writing, I did a quick book 4 in a horror series I had penned as Geoffrey Caine years back. Always wanted to work again with Dr. Abraham Stroud, arecheologist and vampire/werewolf slayer, so BAYOU WULF came into being while I allowed something more major, bigger, more ambitious to percolate and it came to me -- Go Find The BISMARCK.

Go after the Bismarck just as Dr. Robert Ballard did not rest on his laurels of finding the Tianic, where she sat on the ocean floor. Ballard next set his sights on The Bismarck, so why not do the same, only give it my special stamp. Give it intrigue, make it compelling, bring in Hitler, get into his head a bit, get into his obsession with the occult and what that might have to do with the ill-fated Bismarck.

And how can I get an Alastair Ransom-type character during WWII aboard the ship to act as hero? Would he be German or British? Would he have help or act as a loner? And what about alternating chapters with a current day or futuristic tale of divers going into the now wreck -- as I did with Titanic, only while making it 'somewhat familiar' making sure it is uniquely its own story?

These WHAT IF questions form the backbone and skeletal makeup of story, and they represent the first "percolating process" for the imagination. They help me SEE scenes, picture the moment(s), imagine the dialouge and scenes and characters. I imagine the principle characters about a country store cracker-barrel or in this case the ship's galley -- of course aboard the largest battleship ever built to that date, Bismarck's Galley was likely two or three huge rooms needed to feed a crew of some two thousand.

In any event, I want to do my best again for youZ guyZ -- to do a kind of Julia & Julia Journal but this one is not about cooking food but cooking up an imagination emporium--another word for a helluva novel. So am making this ANNOUNCEMENT here and now -- GONNA NEED A TITLE...SO THERE WILL BE A TITLE CONTEST.

Am GOING to need some 'throwaway' characters - extras willing to die on the Bismarck, but this time German names will be in order for the most part. There will be a slew of other names during the telling of the modern dive to Bismarck story, however, so I will be asking for volunteers -- you give me the green light and I will kill you off in brutal fashion in the story I am tentatively calling BISMARCK 1941 - 2012 or Bismarck 2013. Much depends on how soon I can get the novel penned as to that significant date.

So am putting out the call to NAME the story contest, and seeking Extras willing to die for the cause.

I will be posting these needs on facebook, twitter, driving people here and there. For the time being if you'd care to read on here are the opening scenes so far. PLEASE tell me what you think in the comments section.

Here is the excerpt in very Rough Form:

B I S M A R C K 2013

May 5, 1941 aboard the Bismarck

Adolph Hitler smiled and rocked on his heels, 5’10 in his British-made Wellington boots; he smiled and turned his head in all directions from the bridge of the deadliest battleship ever to set sail on the high seas—Bismarck. He’d come aboard with heavy security, and Lt. Commander Peter Dorfmann had noticed the box—a wooden crate marked as canned fruit, ostensibly a gift for Admrial Lutgens. Hitler’s entourage plied directly to the Admiral’s quarters first, deposited the gift, and had returned to inspect the rows upon rows of sailors lining the deck to greet him, after which came the speech-making.

Dorfmann, well aware of the fidgeting among the ranks now, did his best to set an example, staring up at the fuehrer with a look of pride affixed to his face. He did so while his eyes wandered to the other officers aboard that he could see from his vantage point. There was X whose adoration for Hitler could not be matched. Not far from X, stood X, who was equally excited to greet the leader of the Third Reich who had graced the ship with a blessing now, ending with, “I pray not for you men of Bismarck, for many will die to achieve our ends. I pray not for the Bismarck herself.” Hitler’s voice had gone to an uncharacteristic whisper at the microphone that covered most of his blunt features. Peter wondered how the man could say such things and not a single grumble from the men aboard this ship when Hitler ended with, “I pray for der reich, the Fatherland!”

This sent a cheer up among the men so loud that it sent seagulls a mile away scurrying.

Bismarck, named for its architect Johan Bismarck, had been originally christened and launched amid a crowd of thousands who’d swarmed into the Hamburg shipyards of 14 February 1939 to celebrate the launch of Germany’s grandest battleship. Cheers had filled the air that day, and Peter had been on hand, in his uniform, under orders to be there among the onlookers, giving the Nazi salute as the ceremony came to a close and the giant warship groaned and slowly slid from its gantry and into the water for the first time. At the time, Peter hadn’t a clue that he would be enlisted to be among Bismarck’s crew.

So why now, two years later, with almost the entire continent of Europe save Russia and Spain under Nazi control, was Hitler here, aboard, carting oranges and apples to Admiral Lutgen’s quarters?

Peter was born curious and he was raised cynical.

As for Hitler, Adolph, Peter privately called him, Peter could hardly believe the events that had led Hitler from a failed soldier, a failed artist, a failed family man to this—his prominence as the leader of the Third Reich, but it must be destined, it must be fate, a higher power to which, someday, Adolph might perhaps bow to give thanks. As for the battleship Bismarck, her guns the most enormous ever devised, Hitler smiled even wider now, no doubt at the thought of the power beneath his feet, at the adoration of the mariners, and at Admiral Gunther Lutgens introduction. Not that the Fuhrer needed any introduction.

Still the introduction went on at length, followed by a welcome aboard from Captain Johan Lindermann, who kept it short. Peter thought he detected a minute and quickly covered smirk from Lindermann.

Still with Hitler basking in it, the long and winding introduction, filled as it were with praise for his leadership and vision for the Fatherland, finally closed, and Adolph, feeling a twinge of his childhood fantasies bubbling up, raised his hand to the two thousand men aboard Bismarck and shouted, “Seig heil, sieg heil.” To which the men responded in one voice, two replies: “Sieg Heil,”—to Victory—and “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

And so it went on. It went on long. Every proud young seaman in the Der Deutbchen Krietgsmarine stood on the decks, arms raised in the now well-known Nazi salute, and when the combined nearly two thousand men raised their voices, shouting Zeig Hiel, Zeig Hiel, it felt as if Bismarck herself shook with the reverberation.

May 5, 2012 at the wreck site in the Irish Sea

The black undersea cosmos at these depths could not be calculated for its sheer impact on the human psyche. Ryne Muellerheim slid in behind Horst Baderfitz as they closed in on the sunken Bismarck, encased as they were in the underwater marvel of a mini-sub, the Blitzmariner, of modern German design.

Both divers could trace their ancestry back to the men on the shipwreck they were racing toward—the infamous German destroyer, Bismarck. They moved through the deep like a wave, hardly noticeable even on the radar screens manned by people who expected to see them, the captain and crew of Victory, the seagoing salvage ship that meant to take what it could from the bowels of the sunken WWII battleship.

They had little interest in anything else such as precisely how or why she sank as history dictated her demise quite thoroughly, although some scholars questioned the odds of a direct hit on her rudder by a single torpedo fired from a plane like some gift from the gods of the British fleet and ample vengeance for the sinking of The Hood, the Lusitania, and Titanic’s sister ship, Britannic—all of which had been sent to the bottom by German engineering of one kind or another.

Ryne and Horst watched out the portals, marveling at there being no wake, no bubbles, nothing to indicate they were here. They traveled much as a shark or dolphin. Absolute silent running in what amounted to a high-tech titanium shark, a sleek, space-age designed undersea craft created specifically for this, the most ambitious salvage of a dead ship at such depths in all of history. They meant to make a fortune along with that history.

The Bismarck sat at the sea bottom in the straights of the Irish Sea in a deep valley floor. It would be 4,570 meters or 15,000 feet to the surface should they encounter any problem. In other words, miles to the surface once they exited Victory and dared enter Bismarck. The two men had seen graphs depicting the depth, putting New York’s Empire State building on the bottom for comparison alongside Paris’ Eiffel Tower and Toronto’s CN Tower—all dwarfed to the size of a needle on such graphs. It was a miracle that Robert Ballard had ever found Titanic, and even more of a miracle that he’d located the Bismarck in 1989 at such depths. All thanks to the advanced underwater sonar developed by the US Navy.

A school of krill suddenly engulfed them, the cloud so thick as to blot out sight.

Damn, it’s like a white out in Upstate New York!” shouted Ryne, who’d spent some time in America.

Horst nodded. “Like million diamonds blinking down on—” but he didn’t finish before the implosion of Victory, killing everyone aboard instantly, the two German divers and George Fleet, the man at the controls. They never knew what hit them aside from the krill storm but Victory had slammed into Bismarck like an airplane hitting a mountainside. The krill had blinded Victory’s pilot long enough for Bismarck to kill them all.

At the surface, everyone aboard The North Star—an oceangoing scientific and salvage ship, those at the monitors sat stunned, aghast at knowing the expedition was over, doomed to failure. One man had noted the sudden cloud on the radar screen that had engulfed Victory and the three men inside with the suddenness of a storm at sea. At the last possible moment, Fleet, steering the sub, had shouted out the word ‘whale’. Where there was krill, there was whale. He’d most likely—though no one would ever know for certain—cut away from the whale to avoid hitting it only to crash into Bismarck rather than make a soft landing aboard her.

Rob Walker
Titanic 2012

Kindle is King and ahhh...Walker

2011-05-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, I am on a level playing field with all the major writers as I am taking up just as much space on the Kindle Shelf as any other author, no matter the name. Thanks and praise be to Kindle. Honestly, every chance I get, I push the Kindle reader as every time a Kindle dedicated eReader is sold, I hear a Ka-Chinging in my ear. I have posted posiive on Kindle on my facebook, pushed it one twitter and on chat groups as well as my blogs. Definitely, the thing for all of us to do - just as we should all be pushing LITERACY...

The Kindle has reKindled more readig in America than any other device known to man in modern times. Just recently, I pushed on an article that explained that the kinde is the top selling gadget of all gadgets that people WANT - such news is good for us all.

Frankly, after working with some 8 or 9 different publishers and as many agents over the years, guess who has been my best partner in crime and books? AMAZON, yes, and I kiss the ground CEO Bezos walks on as he, more than any publisher on the planet, had done more for WRITERS than anyone anywhere. When did an Indian like me (part, very small part Cherokee) ever get such a great "contract" or Treaty from a white man? A 70/30 split favoring this Mississippi born hybrid? WOW and come on!

Plus, and this is a huge plus with anyone who had gone the rounds with NYC publising -- plus I can't reject myself! I send it off to my publisher, who is now ME, and I get special treatment - last five book length works, no rejection, no returns to speak of, and no remainders! No 'special events' or 'special sales' for which I earn nada, zip. No waiting on a vauge, questionable royalty check filled with mysterious bookkeeping that revolves around an antiquated system of withholding author payment on basis of the dreaded RETURNS. No waiting a year and a half to see the book take shape and get 'clothes' and back copy and pricing while you have no say-so in any of it. Gone are those days.

In point of fact, there are so many pluses to becoming an Indie author that I placed up my last five titles without the bother of taking them again to an agent or a publisher, washing my hands of the entire system and replacing it with me, myself, and I. A dream come true for this ol' country boy.

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/
http://www.1stturningpoint.com/
Find me on Twitter, facebook, KDP

2011-05-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

Your website is your calling card, like your business card, so you want it to be as attractive as possible, and when you hear back from people who have visited your site, you want to be responsive, to make changes to it if it makes sense to do so.

My website has a great look thanks to my son's graphic art genius. Not long ago the folks at First Turning Point reviewed this website, and as a result I had changes made. Even more recently, having had enough complaints about its opening with sound/music, I squelched the sound and replaced the one youtube with another video that could be turned on and off with a button.

Go to First Turning Point to see the initial review of the site. Find it here. Let me know what you think of this author's site. Drop me a comment. Here is where you can find the review. Below that is the website url itself.

http://1stturningpoint.com/?p=3708

http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Rob

URLs Leading to Rob Walker Online Everywhere

2011-04-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

Here is where you can find info and more info on me, from me, about me, but truly directed at YOU...articles, blogs, talk radio, website, all of it so you can run me down....

My website www.robertwalkerbooks.com

Kindle community forum thread “what moves kindle books off shelves” is at:

http://forums.kindledirectpublishing.com/kdpforums/thread.jspa?threadID-=112880

Blogs: http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/
           http://makeminemystery.blogspot.com/
           http://book-i-leaks.blogspot.com/
           http://wwwrobertwwalkercom.blogspot.com/
           http://inkwalksbcglobalnet.blogspot.com/

Online mag./articles: http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/
                                 http://www.1stturningpoint.com/

My Facebook page: http://ning.it/fqfWp9

My Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/RobertWWalker

My Blog Talk Radio Interview: http://ning.it.i1wssx/

ACcure...a cure...Accurate Accuracy in An Historical Novel

2011-03-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

Never Forget the Author in Authority, Authenticity

A Newbie just finished her first historical novel, and she asks: Just how authentic does it have to be? How much accuracy is necessary? How do you keep from making horrible gaffs?

My initial response in my head is that if you are going to actually use a jock strap in your Roman Gladiator story, you had better do the minimum to find out first if gladiators used jock straps, and secondly, if they did, you need to know what they were made from--certainly not plastics or some mysterious material dropped on the Romans by aliens (unless you are simply go for goofy, fun, crazy laughs such as A Funny Thing Happened to me on the way to the Colosseum). If it is serious historical novel the authentic Roman jock strap must be determined unless you choose not to use it - the strap.

The entire idea of Historical Fiction is a somewhat schizophrenic label, history meaning somehow ground in fact while fiction is (from the Spanish ficciones) a "pack of lies" even if it is to "prove a truth"... so we historical fictionlists no less than our sister schizoid science fictionalists (science supposedly being fact), we are in a dither, a conundrum as it were, but some keeping our feet firmly aground helps.

What does EB White's Charlotte's Web have in common with historical fiction and indeed all fiction, this wild fantasy we adults read to our children only to find ourselves so drawn in as to be the ones in tears when Charlotte doesn't make it (you won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take...). What indeed makes this FANTASY fiction believable and in fact mesmerizingly so, a tale so crazily unbelievable. Come on, a story of a pig and a spider having a full-blown platonic love for one another, a relationship we'd all like to have, one of unconditional and sacrificial love all taking place in our own backyard? What makes it work? What makes Stephen King horror work?

Accuracy, authenticity, the authenticated voice - alongside accuracy and authenticity in background, backdrop, props, and in short DETAILS. The Devil is in the Details. Detailed accuracy makes a believer of us all both in film and in fiction. Setting the stage with the proper accoutrement's is absolutely necessary to make historical fiction truly come to life.

Below are the two from the hip responses the young novitiate got from my good friend Pat Brown and then from me the same day she asked the question (isn't the Internet something?)

On Tue, 3/29/11, Pat Brown, author of Absinthe of Malice (a great read by the way) wrote:

I've started writing historicals recently. The first two I finished were set in 1929 in Los Angeles. I'm writing one right now set in New York in the late 1880s. All you can do in terms of research is the best you can. The
20s, being Prohibition and all it brought is very well documented. Unless you have a major blunder, like put the wrong President in Washington or have the Titanic sink in 1969 (Hi Rob!!) most people won't call you on.

Or if you're like me, you spend a small fortune on books and things like old Sears, Roebuck catalogues. I was also lucky enough to go to L.A. to get some research there. Not knowing where your novel is set I can't say much more.

But really, story and characters trump research.

> To which I then wrote to support what Pat said on the same day:

I agree with all that Pat says here, esp. about story over research; research is part of the back-drop and like setting belongs back of characters and action as backdrop. Look at Gone With the Wind for an example. Scarlet's 'soap opera' is far more compelling and important than the lil ol Civil War, now isn't it? As for the best way to get CAUGHT in a blunder before it goes public, I have found my best avenue of defense are good early readers and editors - whom I love, one and all. I generally acknowledge them one and all on my ack page, and yes ebooks have ack pgs and dedication pgs if they so choose same as some having a eAutographed title page.

Like Pat, for props, I rely heavily on Sears and Roebuck but also Wards' Catalogues of the day along with all the many books consulted. If you have your character pick up a gun that does not yet exist, whoa, you will hear about it....sometimes you will hear about it and the person who flagged it is DEAD WRONG. But even if you do a contemporary novel as I did with my Edge Series and set it in a venue you have NEVER been to as in Houston, TX.....you will rile some folks up if you fail to call the Canals running through the city Channels....or visa-verse as I forget which was correct now but I sure HEARD about it from ONE disgruntled reader who did acknowledge that it was the only problem bothering him in FOUR novels of 80-90,000 words, and he loved my main character, a Texas bred Cherokee Indian named Lucas Stonecoat.

So you see....you do your best, you be as diligent about the research as humanly possible, and then you do like ten rewrites as your early readers pick it apart, going back to the well and your sources many times over. My problem with research is I always leap into the story and have to stop and start to go back to the research to be sure....to be sure....

PLEASE DO LEAVE a comment if nothing else to let me know you dropped by!

Rob Walker
Titanic 2012 - a hundred year old mystery with a horrific twist
Children of Salem - an ecumenical spy w/vendetta falls in love with the witch's daughter instead

Classic Claptrap or Classic Literature - Where's the Line Drawn?

2011-02-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

Genre Fiction Becomes Classic Literature How?
by Robert W. Walker

There has been a long-standing feeling among the snobbish in the literary world that says such books as Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist, or any genre book is hardly worthy of academic concern, that the mystery and horror novel in particular are inferior to what is considered actual "literature" which somehow has more dignity about it and is certainly a place for the classics. And yet the works we today consider classics were in the day of their publication condemned as "genre" or something less than "literature".

Certainly there are some people who point to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and call it a boy's adventure tale yet it has become the classic, even the pinnacle of the type of book that academics land on and like vultures pick apart and pluck out symbolism, irony, depth of characterization, important themes. Such matters concern academics just as a single short story by Pappa Hemingway can cause whole dissertations to be written to which Hemingway must laugh all the way to eternity.

But somehow even today there are bastions of academia and readers who feel that a mystery, especially a murder mystery or a police procedural such as an Ed McBain novel does not come up to the level of importance to be called anything but a lesser creature than literature. The word literature must be used only for dead poets and ancient novels of the past, for the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, E.A.Poe, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and too many to list here. However, novelists mining the same fields as Verne's science fiction, Doyle's puzzles with Sherlock Holmes at their center, Dickens' soap operas of human condition and contrition, Twain's humorist travelogues or young adult coming of age tales, Edgar Allan Poe's horror, Shelley's horror, Abraham Stoker's horror classic Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde -- these are somehow elevated due to the mastery of the author and their "genre" forgiven or forgotten.

I condemn no book that works, and mystery titles of today and recent years deal with huge issues such as what it means to be an honorable man in a less than honorable world; mysteries cover the gamut of modern life and its alienating nature, the disenfranchisement of mankind from his true nature, and the stripping away of individual freedoms. Lord of the Flies, a British classic, is horror of the first order, one of civilization's worst nightmares. Bradbury's fiery tale of burning books while science fiction is a study in governmental controls gone amok,and yes, the intellectuals are the first to be imprisoned in a theocracy or a dictatorship. Mystery, Horror, Science Fiction, even romance from Shakespeare to the thinnest of modern day romance novels touch upon psychology, good vs. evil, the ripple effect of gossip and miscommunication.

I submit to you that genre fiction, including my own historical thrillers, deals with the most complex of human desires, needs, goals, desires. Just as the core story within the pages of Herman Melville's Moby Dick deal with aberrant human psyche so perfectly, just as Dickens' Christmas Carrol deals with the human condition and its complexities, so to does Hammett and Leonard, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, the Bronte heirs - a long, distinguished list of female authors from across the modern landscape such as Laura Lippman, Charlaine Harris, Tess Gerritsen, and Patricia Cornwell.

Tell me Dr. of Literature and Professor of Classics, how will the modern 'masters' of these various genres from science fiction to historical fiction be regarded by academia, and in the end, will they not square up with the elder statesmen of early "genre" fiction classics thanks in large measure to their popularity? Dickens was writing a series of serial novels with each installment in the daily newspaper there in London, Mark Twain writing for a San Francisco newspaper, and today as with the huge crowds waiting for the next installment, so too hordes of readers anxiously await the next King installment.

I recall how The Catcher in the Rye suddenly was in every freshman English class across America. I don't see that so much nowadays. I wonder where The Catcher went. I see more copies of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart - a mystery surrounding a character who refuses to change because something inside him cannot change. An African village mystery man, a book of great physical battles as well as mental battles written in English by an African author--a modern day "classic" for what reason? It is considered great literature, great writing. Recall Flowers for Algernon and 2001 - A Space Odyssey, books that were also finding their way into every college English class and considered "high-filuting literature.

It may be true that for a genre piece of writing to rise to the level of literature and especially classic literature that it be read by more than one generation and so not easily forgotten by time itself. Few books rise to this level, but in calling out whole genres such as mysteries as somehow lesser than literature is in fact a strange attitude and behavior, for all great literature come out of popular acclaim as much if not more than critical acclaim which often lags behind discoveries made by readers of every stripe and not the critics.

Robert W. Walker (Rob)
follow popular acclaim for my own Children of Salem and Titanic 2012

Changing Directions - New Work in Progress - and a Short

2011-01-23T09:06:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone -- as Titanic is up and selling on Kindle, I've turned back to doing a horror novel, something fast, furious, and a lot easier to write than the complex and heavily researched Titanic 2012 which is garnering rave reviews now, some of which I have noted on my facebook page. A simple Google of Titanic 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic will take you to some reviews as will a visit to Amazon.com/Kindle store.

In the meantime, my Children of Salem is now my bestselling Kindle title - 325 sold since Jan. 1 alone, and it has come up on several Kindle bestselling lists - and for a time was #1 in historical fiction.

I am working on Bayou Wulf and hope to have the rough draft finished between now and February's end, perhaps into March. That will be then a YEAR since I began work on Titanic 2012 -- giving myself a year to accomplish that book, which was completed and posted way in advance of a year -- on Halloween Night 2010. Up until Children of Salem took over as my highest selling title, it had been a thin, straightforward horror novel and so I am in an effort with Bayou Wulf to offer up more in the category of horror, and those who have read Titanic know of its suprenatural and horrorific overtones....after all, I did place a disease-spreading monster on board.

The Bayou Wulf title is an extension of my 3-book series featuring Dr. Abraham Stroud, vampire slayer whose inheritance frees him up to bring in any technology and any manpower and gunpower necessary to destroy such godawful creatures as werewolves, vampires, and revenants. Abe first appeared in Vampire Dreams, Werewolf's Grief, and Zombie Eyes - previous to this as paperbacks with older pub dates and more boring titles and artwork than my Kindle editions. Abe is an archeologist with a steel plate in his head earned in Vietnam, a former Chicago cop, and the great-great-great grandson of Van Helsing. Bayou Wulf continues his story - a continuation only made possible by my partnering with Amazon-Kindle.

I will place up an except of Bayou Wulf soon to give you a flavor of same. For now, I wish to place up a short story featuring Lucas Stonecoat whose four books begun with Cutting Edge are a study in character-driven story. A psychological thriller -- Here it is: Shy One Pearl

A Det. Lucas Stonecoat short story (Lucas is featured in the Edge Series)

Quarrelsome was the single word most people leveled at Detective Lucas Stonecoat, a full-blood Texas Cherokee Indian cop in Houston, and a man who proved that a Native American Indian could kick the stereotype, get off the reservation, and make a living as a police in the white world-and still keep his identity. There was much to admire about the man besides his Jimmy Smits good looks, his 6’4 lean frame, and his mesmerizing eyes. Still, he was surly and contentious ever since Pearl Sanchez had disappeared.

He kicked out at his desk, the sound sending a shot through the old police station slated for demolition.

“You gonna bring the house down before the wrecking ball?” asked Dr. Meredyth Sanger, police shrink, to whom Lucas always went for profiling help. He’d asked her for any insights she might have about the kind of man who could abduct a fourteen-year-old girl and then send little bloody pieces of her home to the family, making it clear he was chopping Pearl up little by little.

Lucas had gone over everything ten, eleven, twelve times. Everyone who worked for the father, everyone the mother had ever known, completely turning their private lives inside out in search of anyone anywhere at any time that either of the two might have crossed. Whoever was behind this crime seemed to take great, abiding joy in the suffering of Pearl’s parents, Pearl being their only daughter. It stood to reason it’d be a disgruntled employee, after All Sanchez ran a business both high-powered and involving hundreds of employees. Countless employees and come and gone, many of them upset with Sanchez. None of these panned out. But each had to be checked. Meanwhile the clock ticked on for Pearl.

He’d turned then in earnest to the mother, and he found things in her past she pleaded he keep just between them, things that even Sanchez didn’t know. Again none of the leads here panned out. He went back to Sanchez, tossing out the idea it was work-related, digging into his background. Could it be someone he’d crossed as a child, as a teen, as a young man in college? Nothing.

So much time wasted and nothing. The strike force had no better luck. The clock ticked on. Time was not on Pearl’s side.

They finally had to cede to the notion the maniac who had Pearl was a total psycho with an agenda he alone could possibly understand. A mad agenda that had no connection to the real world. This meant no real world sensible means of looking for a motive, and without a motive—if he had simply stalked her and lifted her off the street for no reason other than to chop her up and send her piece by piece home….how could they possibly catch the fiend?

He’d remained faceless all this time.

He left no clue, as corporeal as fog, a phantom within the fog, a fog that had kept Lucas in the dark all this time. Too long…another digit arrived in a tidy box.

The parents recognized the knuckle and nail.

Who knew if the crazed fiend might simply next take her leg, an arm, her head, or Pearl’s spleen, her heart, her stomach?

In the middle of it all, Lucas’s Chief, Aaron Phillips, recently having taken over the stationhouse that’d soon be leveled, got in Lucas’s face and ordered him in no uncertain terms to see a shrink other than his chum, Meredyth.

“For kicking a desk?”

“Just do it before this case overwhelms you!”

“See a shrink when the case is ongoing!” Lucas demanded.

“That’s an order! No excuses!”

“But time’s of the essence, Chief! We need to keep on the case, else Pearl—”

“Case’ll be waiting, Lucas. This one’s going nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“Nowhere.”

It was too true. In every sense of the word, the Pearl Sanchez case was going nowhere.

As soon as Chief Phillips turned his back, Lucas felt an attack coming on, one of his blackouts from a lingering condition from years past that only Meredyth Sanger knew of. He’d learned to trust her for this reason, but now she’s handing me off to some shrink I don’t even know? And what gives with Chief Phillips, stopping me from doing my job in the middle of my investigation? That just isn’t done!

Then the blackout was over as quickly as it threatened to drop him to his knees, and he saw it…saw it clearly. Something had changed in Pearl’s life. Her routine disrupted.

The new piano teacher.

How many times had he seen it in the paperwork. How many times had he ignored it?

Pearl was locked away in her piano teacher’s basement or attic or crawl space. Little Pearl’d been taking lessons for three years, and she played at the school pageant, a regular prodigy. The pictures depicted a beautiful young Hispanic girl. But her piano teacher had died in a car accident, and she’d begun to go to a new piano teacher. It was a detail no one, including Lucas, had paid any attention to.

Lucas raced from the old stationhouse in Mid-town Houston. He drove across the city with his strobe light flashing, horn blaring. He called for backup as he did so. The last package sent to her parents had held Pearl’s bloody left ear. The maniac could tire of the ‘game’ at any time.

“Anatomy is destiny,” Sigmund Freud had said. This was a twisted truism here. At what point would the piano teacher-turned-killer decide to take a piece of Pearl that would be fatal?

He found the address that’d been in their files all along, the same address he’d subconsciously memorized. The piano teacher had been pleasant and had answered all the questions previous detectives working under Lucas had asked of her. Her alibi established, she’d claimed not to have seen Pearl for a week, not since her last session at the keys. Another dead end, so he’d thought.

So everyone had thought.

Now he stood pounding on the door. He had no warrant, so he must talk his way in, sift about the place, make small talk, find reason to open the door to the basement, try to get a rise out of the bitch.

He calmly did it all, and Mrs. Louise Bohnheim came at him with a knife as soon as he went for the door. As soon as she attacked, Lucas put her down with a right hook and tore the door open. He took the rickety stairwell two and three steps at a time, and sure enough here was Pearl, her eyes wide, her mouth moving below the gag, her bare body shivering and covered with small cuts where the mad woman had been at play.

Lucas tore away her bonds and gag, and he lifted her into his arms, and she said thank you repeatedly in a mantra of gratitude, and he told her to save her energy, and that he’d get her to a hospital, and that she’d soon be in the arms of mother and father. Safe.

“Is that the way you remember it, Detective Stonecoat?” asked Dr. Kari Martin, the police shrink he didn’t trust, despite kind things Meredyth had said about Martin.

“You can be sure she’s the best, Lucas. I would only find the best for you. I love you, remember?”

“Remember?” he looked up to see not Meredyth but Dr. Martin instead. “Hold on. Whataya mean, how I remember it. That’s how it was, just like I told you.”

“You spoke to Pearl when you found her?”

“Yes.”

“And she spoke back?”

“Yes.”

“Thanked you repeatedly, you say?”

“Repeatedly.”

“And when you got her to the hospital, she…her eyes were open and she was conscious?”

“Yes! How many g’damn times I gotta say it?”

“Until you get it right.”

“Right?”

“Meredyth said to keep at you until you get straight with this Pearl Sanchez business, detective.”

“Get straight?”

“Detective, the coroner has time of death for Pearl Sanchez at twenty-four hours before you reached her.”

He shook his head firmly….then more firmly. “That’s not how it happened.”

“No…not in your head, obviously.”

Lucas swallowed hard and stared at his griddle-sized hands; they seemed far away, as if his arms were turned to rubber and stretching away from him. Martin finally broke the silence. “Detective, how long since the Sanchez case was closed?”

“Active yesterday, closed today.”

“Try six months ago, Lucas.”

“Six months?” Lucas looked around the office and past the office to the green walls of the institution. “Six months?”

“That’s how long you’ve been with us here.”

Doctor and cop stared across at one another in a silence of infinite depth.

“You saying, I was committed?”

“Yes.”

“And Pearl Sanchez is dead?”

“Yes.”

“I carried her to the hospital in my arms. Gave her to the ER people.”

“Dead, sir. You carried her in dead.”

“I did?”

“I’m sorry, but at least for you, this is a good day.”

“A good day?”

“A breakthrough. You’re aware of your surroundings.”

“Pearl didn’t make it?”

“You had a break down, Lucas.”

“But she talked to me.”

“Perhaps on some level she did; perhaps you soothed her spirit, Lucas, but her body was gone when you arrived ahhh…too late.”

“Too late. But for six months now, playing it over and over in my mind…”

“You saved Pearl. You weren’t too late.”

“I let her down in the real world.”

“It’s a burden to be sure, detective, but one that we’re here to help you accept.”

“Accept?”

“The only way to free you.”

“Free me from this place?”

“No…from…from this version of events…”

“Gotta accept the truth.”

“Then we can talk about your going out the door.”

Lucas heard faint music playing somewhere the other side of the door. He stood, pushed his chair away, and went toward the door. “I could’ve sworn I’d gotten there in time.”

“I’m sorry. Everyone is.”

“I never suspected the piano teacher.”

“No one did.”

“No one did in time.”

Quarrelsome was the single word most people used for Detective Lucas Stonecoat, surly and contentious ever since the Sanchez case. Before that he’d been a likeable fellow, and he’d had a chance with Dr. Sanger. Not anymore. That Sanchez girl…what was her name? Pearl, a shy one, yeah…. He’d gotten there shy maybe twenty, twenty-four hours…had failed to break it in time. Now shy Pearl haunted him.

Now his badge weighed heavy.

Titanic 2012 - The Launch of an infamous ShipWreck!

2010-11-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

TITANIC 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic is now officially up at the Kindle store shelves at Amazon.com/Kindle store or simply do a search for Titanic 2012 and it'll pop right up. Two great reviews are up on Kindle already and the book is selling briskly. For a look at an indepth review of our baby -- come see the baby!!! At: http://www.amazon.com/Titanic-2012-Curse-RMS-ebook/product-reviews/B0049U4CCE/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Way ahead of the year-long schedule I had set for myself, the book debut just this past Sunday, last day in Oct....just under the wire for Halloween.

I wish to thank each and everyone here who followed the evolution of the book - to see how I personally Cook a Book.

Thanks for your continued patience and frienship....but ain't that what it's all about?

Rob Walker

writing as in art - can it be taught? I for one say yes!

2010-10-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Writing Art - Can It be Taught?

As a kid in 4th Grade I knew I wanted to be a writer; never any doubt. On hearing Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Less Taken" at that impressionable age, and having been born in rural Corinth, MS., I also knew I was a "Rebel" as the other kids in a Chicago, IL school called me in large due to my accent and the fact I hadn't known my first name--only my middle name--when the teacher called us up for anything! At any rate, I knew early on that being a writer meant being different and having a love for storytelling. I also early on leaned that many of my teachers--most in fact--had a disdain for this art or feared teaching it and that I was pretty much on my own, that I'd have to be self-taught in this discipline. What I knew was that I needed Gramma's grammar badly--good grammar, that is, and that few to no teachers in my experience really knew how to convey the complexities of this 'dead zone' where no one wished to venture if they could instead turn us to doing paper machete projects (all through elementary especially). However, the basics I did pick up in 4th Grade are the same basics I teach in my 101, 102, and creative writng classes at the college level today -- same "stuff" people are resistant to. Ultimately, I teach "sound and sense" in that if it "sounds" rythmic and it makes "sense"--that is clear, use it and move on with your story. That has served me well, Sound and Sense.

The question still nags at us, however--can Creative, Crafty, Clever Writing be taught? I feel that ultimately it can be taught (depending on what one means by taught, of course!) On a recent kindle discussion group, we got into it with these cogent results thanks to the caliber of the people in the group. First the question was raised by a member, so I thank Carla Rene for bringing it up. Two responses I felt particularly good follow here:

Subject: Re: [Kindlefloor] Can Creative Writing Be Taught?

To: "Kindle Discussion Group"

Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010, 6:37 PM

Carla posed this question: I know some here are creative writing course instructors as well as English
teachers, but I'm involved in a heated discussion on another writing forum, and this brings up a great point: CAN you teach someone the basic skills and inherent ability to write a decent novel? Or short-story?

Anne replied with: I think there are aspects that can, and aspects that can't, be taught. Writing is kind of a trifecta of inspiration, talent and wordcraft. It doesn't matter how well you can lay out a plot or build a character if you don't have an idea for a plot or character. You can have the most wonderful ideas in the world, but it does no good if you can't tell a story. And you can have a great idea and a great story, but neither does you any good unless you have the mechanical skills to tell it coherently and readably.

Obviously the skills of writing -- spelling, grammar, punctuation, structure and so on -- can be taught. To a certain extent, storytelling can be taught in that you can talk about character building and consistency, plot structure, pacing and so on. Beyond that, however, it comes down to imagination and talent, and another vital ingredient: PRACTICE.

No amount of classroom teaching is going to create a really good writer. You can't teach talent and imagination. However, you CAN *encourage* and *exercise* and *polish* them. I think creative writing classes are excellent for that purpose. Kind of the pilates of the imagination.

Sue entered the fray with this: Anne, I totally agree with you. As a long time wannabe writer, I found that my talent (if you want to call it that) lay in expository writing (not what I would have wished for). I taught creative writing to 8th graders and high school freshmen for many years and those are the years that I value most highly. During my many years of teaching English to 8th and 9th graders, the California Board of Education tried something quite phenomenal: actually looking at the writing of our students to determine if we were making any progress! "The California Writing Project" pulled the best of the best for training and then invested heavily in training trainers who then worked with teachers at the school site level. I was a trainer and test reader for a few years and I have to say that it was the most exciting time of my teaching career. We actually were able to teach teachers to teach writing (rather than just assigning it). When we were being trained to read and score the student writing tests, papers were to be scored in a 1-5 range (5 being highest), we were told that when we came across a "5" we would know it - and we did. The "4s" were generally almost perfect in every way EXCEPT they didn't have that extra special undefinable "sparkle" that came right out and hit you between the eyes. Those "5" papers were very exciting to read.

I think that, as English teachers, we definitely can teach most kids to be 3s and the 4's, but no way could anyone teach that extra something that we found in those few wonderful pieces of writing that were 5s.. Unfortunately, even though we were showing great progress in teaching writing for several years there, another, easier to grade (and less costly) idea came along and "The California Writing Project" fell by the wayside, as has almost every other good new idea that has come along It was a sad time for those of us who valued good writing and believed that we could help to make it happen.

To which Rob-me, myself, and I added: I have worked at Jr. High and High School levels also, so I bemoan the fact that so many FINE writing programs at those levels instituted in the 70s and excellent results like the one Sue spoke of -- all across America in fact -- were shut down unceremoniously, or rather unceremoniously shut down due to first cuts always going to the arts--and writing is one of the arts with a somewhat scientific element called sentence structure, types, and grammar wherein you demonstrate skills but you also learn the art of active voice for fiction in particular--dramatic writing.

Sue is absolutely and sadly right on the money when it comes to ANYTHING proven to work for our students is the first thing to be tossed from our schools as a result of cost cutting and administrative jockeying, and teachers' unions concerns also place the most crucial concerns regarding actual classroom dynamics like teacher-student ratio so that real instruction can happen at the bottom of the list of ideals. Money always a key factor and there's no poetry in money nor money in poetry--not as there is in accounting and the sciences.

That said, as one who is self-taught in what is termed creative writing and a writer who happens to be capable of teaching, and a teacher who practices what he teaches daily, I can safely say that yes, a 'talented' young person can learn umpteen thousands of techniques from every published author who has ever put pen to paper. Talent is an iffy word, and imagination is like quicksilver and mercury often coming and going, and to be called talented, even genius, is at best an affectation. What creates most excellent writers is the steady practice of the trade, especially any sort of creatve work, be it the well-crafted essay/expository writing or story. The more one writes, the more one reads, the more one prospers as an author (not always monetarily but via the cache of learning). Talent if a dangerous term in my opinion along with the notion of the silver-tongue born into the head of the child as if prepared via lineage--although they may well have found an "artistic-right-brained genetic connect" as well as a left-brained science-oriented genetic connect" due to lineage. Hard to say. However, I do feel strongly that I have not wased 30+ years in teaching writing; that is, that a great deal of writing is teachable, and we can bring students to the brink of that "Sixth Sense" element that goes beyond the 5 senses and touches the reader in that spiritual zone we all aspire to.

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
"Autographed" ebook ARC of Titanic 2012 available by contacting me direct at inkwalk@sbcglobal.net

Are Cheap as Dirt eBook Prices Creating Devlaued Authors & Their Works?

2010-10-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

Short Answer: NO....long answer is a debate between authors who have taken the http://www.dtp.amazon.com/ plunge and other authors who are sticking with what they've always known. Here is my take on the subject but before I say Publishers are Devaluing authors who are setting prices low on ebook platforms, let me say this: There is no integrity in this so-called business. Like any other job, when they target you for a raise or an upgrade, you get it and you are happy with The Company - whatever its name. When they target you as simply one of the work force as in "the stable" folks who they draw on to fill spaces with paper or books in this instance, you are pigeonholed as surely as when you could never, no matter what, get anything above a C from Mrs. C, your English teacher at H.G. Wells High Schooooool. The company, school, publisher always demands loyalty from you, the worker, but they offer zero loyalty to you in the end--Zero. That said and posited in your mind, know that the illusion that publishing is somehow above such behaviors and is a "gentlemen's game" -- well maybe in 1890 but I doubt that even then a publisher had anyone working for him that he could not cut loose.

Now know that I believe I hold the record for number of Series characters, and so have had a lot of my characters and storylines CUT. So this is where I an coming from when speaking of loyalty to the job and the job display loyalty in return and such shocking things as integrity and the lack of it found anywhere in publishing.

So here goes:

Dee-Dee Doit says: I am not saying that the individual readers devalue the work of individual writers.
I am saying that the downward trend in pricing devalues our work in the marketplace at large and makes publishers see us as a lesser commodity.

Rob: I object to the word commodity but let us get to the point. Publishers already devalue our work as example: We do our own damn advertising and such groups online as MMA (Murder Must Advertise...Mystery (writers) MUST advertise, so by the behaviors of publishers - specifically the big six - giving no advertising budget to 99& of their 'stable' of authors devalues our work.

No support for midlist authors, no decent income, below living wage income devalues our work. When publishers persist in rewarding gimmick writing rather than quality writing, this devalues our work as when no dollars go to a lifetime professional author because those funds are budgeted to the latest Pamela Anderson's Dress for Success for Little Girls.... and they did it to Mark Twain before us...have since the printing press came into being. Devalued. Readers do not do this when they pay for a 2.99 ebook but publishers do?

Mark Sureshot: I think advances are the only thing—other than a huge inheritance—that makes it possible for a writer to work full time instead of having to struggle with a day job all their life, and ebooks offer no advance.

Rob --A hundred thousand dollar advance for four books = 25,000 a year...subsistence living unless you live in a cardboard box. And since the publisher devalues you and your writing by the time you finish the book (giving it no support by the time 9 months to a year and a half rolls around (pub date) as they are busy with their latest PR campaign for a dead author like VC Andrews who has a greater budget than many thousands of live authors), this devalues your work. Your publisher is busy entertaining the idea of publishng OJ Simpson's "How I Would Have Done it Had I Done it" -- so too busy to be reading your novel...this devalues your work. Condescendingly telling an author that a Stephen King blockbuster creates a trickle down effect that rains down on all of the writers in the house (nonsense), this devalues you.

Ariana Selfassured: I’ve heard some writers say that it does not matter that major publishing houses like Random and Simon and Schuster and Penguin devalue your work if you are willing to sell it for 1.99 or 2.99. But it does to me. I don not want the major houses thinking I sell my work cheap!
Rob: After thirty years of being a slave to the system controlled by a few hundred people called agents (the front guard), editors (the gatekeepers), and publishers (King of the fiefdom or thiefdom), I for one am enjoying the fact that technology has caught up to my childhood dreams of being my own damn publishing company in need of no King or Thiefdom. No longer an indentured servant, and the freedom from all the nonsense I have endured over these many years, I cannot tell you how wonderful it is.

There are many rivers to the ocean, but as to devlauing you and your books? The readers value your writing far, far more than does the typical publisher who is going to choose the Lady Gaga biography over your literary thriller or historical thriller any day. It is kind of like how everyone talks a big game of how teachers ought to be paid what they are worth but never are. Niether teaching for teaching's sake, the art of it, nor writing quality for quality's sake is rewarded, not in the main most certainly.

It has otten to that point for me (when a publisher apparently does not know what he/she has in hand because of the distractions of the gimmick books bound to make huge profits in the marketplace) that I have had it up to here and I ain't gonna take it anymore!! OK but you may disagree and fine. To each his own but my personal "bestseller ever" appears to be the novel turned down by every agent, editor, and publisher in New York City and in fact anyone who looked at it who was in a position to purchase it but for inane remakrs on rejections like "Sorry but, etc...not right for us...been done...etc." -- Children of Salem is rubber-stamped REJECTED.

But...Same book... but Kindle readers have made their voices heard over what I feel is a novel that ought to have been valued but was not--along with my Cuba Blue and Dead On Writing and now Titanic 2012 (which by this time, I didn't bother as it was REJECTED once long ago when Cameron's movie came out). Now it's me and my partner not my publisher putting out quality books for readers who respond to quality NOT to pricing. Kindle readers and ebook readers in general are far smarter than NYC publishing tells us writers all the time..."Write to the 4th Grade level...No one would be interested in a heroine in Cuba in a series...no one wants to see another book about witches....or the supernatural...or a psychic detective..." All to do with dictating what readers should be reading.

Sara Serenade: Holding a full time job added stress and frustration to my life. I am grateful I can write full time.

Rob: I personally as a professor gain so much for my writing from my students. They inspire me every bit as I inspire them and so they grant me energy and do not steal my strength. I would never quit my day job, not after what I have been through in Dead Tree Publication biz wherein you never know when they decide to cut you off at the knees. A good six or seven of my characters were cut off and I have had to find creaive ways to continue working and developing the characters I want to develop as in ressurecting Inspector Alastair Ransom of Chicago to become Constable Alastair Ransom aboard the Titanic...a character killed off not by me but by my publisher.

This does not even go to the money in the author's pocket. I have in the past three years pocketed far, far more money from my ebooks (cheap as they are) than I have in paper and hardcover books. In fact, this year have made enough to move into another house. So you can keep your so-called integrity, your so-called loyalty, and your so-called "value" of publishing with those in control conglomerates. I will take my small business and quietly sail down my river like Huck and Jim's Moon River.

Robert Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
Come find me on Facebook where we really have fun!

When Did You Feel Finally Established as a Writer? HA!

2010-09-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

WHEN Do You Know You've Arrived as an Author?

Quick & Dirty Answer: When Agents, Editors, Producers, and Saudi Kings are seeking you out.

But seriously.... Recently, this question was asked of me. I had to take a moment, sit, ponder before laughter erupted. When indeed does an author feel secure, feel he has arrived, feel that he has some financial security or that he can reasonably expect to feed a family?

Hell, look at me at sixty-one and I am still the grasshopper while all the ants have accumulated their wealth and wealthy lifestyles. Writing is without guarantees or benefits or retirement funds. It is why I still teach.

I could never be truly established especially as I've always gone against conventional so-called "wisdom" in a flawed and often failed business model or system. One I have my entire career railed against. If you fail to play the game of being pigeon-holed and fit snugly into the idea that you are a writer capable of only wriitng one book over and over again and remain in one category, branded by your very name, then you never reach the gold ring. But writing the same book over and over, being a man of "one book" repeated has never been an option for me, and I have paid dearly for it. Closest I came to being a franchise was my Instinct Series and even there I had to fight over and over with agent and editor that each book be a stand alone and unique in and of itself.

Never once had an argument with a reader when I went tangentially away from the modern serial killer ME FBI format of the chase to do historical novels, or to do something like Titanic 2012 with dual time periods, historical and science fiction and generational horror rolled into one. But looking back, my early Brain Stem which they turned into the lousy title Brain Watch, well it was police procedural paranormal fall in love with an OCD ghost that has taken over your body! Then dovetail with Disembodied, Aftershock, Abbadon....all disparate from one another despite paranormal, woo-woo, and horror elements, each was shockingly different and not easily categorized, and imminently Turn Downable or rejected....

As to getting a foothold in ebooks to the point of enjoying some actual income well above anything I ever saw from paper book publising, now that took about a year to get to where I am having a blast counting coup and counting books sold (or rather readers reading). When I first put the books up a year and three months ago, I had such weak sales that I decided it was all just another head banging against the wall exercise, but even if only making fifty bucks a month, then eighty, then suddenly 899. Well then I got to do a happy dance, and now, well now I groan and bitch if I make less than what I am worth just as I did in the old system. Still, it is like a retirement deal for me as I have NO damn retirement funds coming in because I was and remain pretty much an itinerent teacher....something like one of Colbert's itinerent farm workers.

So for me it took close, close onto a year for my advertising on FB, Twitter, anywhere online at NO costs to me and promo deals like contests on my blog to truly begin to see any results. But man-o-man, I never saw any results with sitting about hoping my paper publishers' efforts at PR or marketing would pay off because there were no efforts taken on behalf of my books from not one of my 8 or 9 different publishers over the past thirty years.

Nowadays, I do a better job at online free publicity gathering, PR, BSP, marketing efforts than my publishers ever did--as they were always rather busy with their Kings and Queens and Jovanovich knockoffs.

My publishers never got around to understanding what they had in hand, even when their editors did....but now I am responsible for all of it, and I love the freedom of it all. Ebooks rock and Kindle is King....in fact, Kindle can make a KING of anyone depending on the tastes of readers and what they say or fail to say. Sorry to say they do next to no Amazon reviews but hopefully more and more review outlets for ebooks will come about.

In the meantime, I will be putting up a fifth exclusive to Kinde Original full-length novel, again one too ambitious and too large for dead tree publishers, my Titanic 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic to be launched on or around Halloween. What a launch this promises to be.

Rob Walker

http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/ - Free opening chapters of Titanic 2012 and Children of Salem
http://www.speakwithoutinterrupton.com/

A Titanic ReWrite Sampling

2010-09-18T17:57:00.001-07:00

HERE is a great example of why ReWriting is Writing from the pages of the Final Draft of Titanic 2012, which I hope to launch now either the 25th or the 30th of Oct. Something like six months ahead of schedule, far from a year as planned back in February.

The parenthesis in the first draft paragraph are comments from early reader, Robert Farley Jr., whose remark prompted me to revisit this issue and make it clearer for the reader, to fully realize there was a problem to begin with but notice what I think is a great response – to ‘dialogue’ it out.

From Chapter 13:

Just outside her door, they again heard someone noisily stumbling down the corridor. After a moment, Kelly added, “Now this thing—yes, it is aboard Scorpio now, pretending to be human—aboard, among us! So I can’t trust anyone; if it knew all that I know, I’d be a target for assassination.” (consistency issue, she’s referred to it as disease carried by someone, now it’s become an “it” pretending to be human.)

REWRITE:

Just outside her door, they again heard someone noisily stumbling down the corridor. After a moment, Kelly added, “Now this thing—yes, it is aboard Scorpio now, David.”

“This disease organism has somehow gotten aboard Scorpio?” his tone made skepticism roar. “Just how did it pull that off? Is it that damned sentient?”

“You don’t understand, it…it uses its hosts…humans. It—”

“Now it’s an it and not a microcosmic creature?”

The Root of All Great Character-Building

2010-06-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for not getting back to the blog sooner; got busy on the total rewrite which I just finished yesterday....and Titanic 2012 has been pushed out to 540 pgs. and although I did a red-pencil reRead/reWrite from stem to stern, top to bottom, it only convinced me I have a lot more work to do.

Props are forgotten, threads are dropped, characters have gone off on their own....and all manner of problems remain. Fortunately, I knew there would be days like this when I am FINISHED but not HARDLY. I have some folks vetting the novel as we speak, and a big complaint is that the character of Ransom is given rather short shrift in his introduction. This is likely due to the fact I have a clear and concise idea of who Alastair Ransom is since I have penned three previous titles with the 1893 detective who is trying to defend his beloved Chicago against the onslaught of crime that comes along with The Chcago World's Fair (Columbian Exposition of 1893). But I oughta know better as folks reading Titanic may well know nothing of Inspector Alastair Ransom, now living under an assumed name and identity in Belfast as he has escaped a Chicago hanging for what he allegedly did to a priest--a bad thing happened on the way to the church.

At any rate, I know I have to re-introduce Alastair now as Wyland, the Belfast private eye in 1912 whose is drawn into a missing persons case which further draws him onto the ship Titanic, chasing an elusive killer, a killer like no other he has faced--a suprahuman creature that poses a threat to all mankind.

Alastair is hired by two young interns in Belfast, and the trio become close friends as a bond forms due to their fighting this common enemy. Meanwhile in 2012 other relationships are forming around David Buckland into whose hands falls a journal kept by one of the interns, a journal that tells a fantastic tale, one that explains why the unsinkable ship went down.

To make it all work one must get to the root of the characaters, to live with them, spend time with them, eat with them, brush teeth with them, frolic in the rain with them if you will. To craft fully-realized characters and/or just to undersand the lengths to which a dedicated and determined author will go--beyond such things as research--you need to read my blog at http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/ or got to http://www.makeminemystery.blogspot.com/ --as there I have posted how this matical, mystical, psychical thing between me and my characters happens. It is a fascinating trip and you will meet there The Root Mon which culminated in a poem but one I used in Pure Insticnt, set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, and in the novel, too, The Root Mon and his store show up along with the poem posted on his store wall. A fascinating character who simply demanded I stop my life and Write Him UP from the depths of my subconscious.

I only know that I have my work cut out for me with regard to Titanic 2012 and it continues to occupy me to no end. Having completed the big first rewrite, I know I must now soon start over at page one and do it all over again. This is not only hard inertia wise, it is difficult to get steam up to do back to back rewrites, but it is also hard because as they say in song -- "Once a story's been told, it can't help but get old" -- and our initial reaction to doing ANOTHER rewrite is disappointment. BUT and this is a huge but! But in the first rewrite it informs us of much of what needs now be done, and we come out of the trees and can see the forest a great deal clearer now. In the next rewrite, more and greater magical things are going to happen because dropped threads, missing props, and many more good things are going to come together far more like clockwork.

So in a sense, I MUST get excited about and look forward to reading, hearing, feeling the story again. Play it again, Sam. In doing so, all he subtle nuances and connective tissue will fall into play.

ReWriting is Writing is ReWriting. Some projects require more, some less, but it is an all important part of the process. Now for more on the fully-realized character, on flesing out character, on living with one's characters to the point of knowing what they will do before they do it....see my blog at make mine mystery or repeated at acme authors! And thanks for hanging with me here! Do leave a comment. Do find me on facebook, too!

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Update on Titanic Tome - RewritX is WritX

2010-06-03T22:49:00.000-07:00

A quick and dirty update -- I have as said begun the reRead and reWrite on the pages for the Titanic Tome....and I have had to red pencil quite a bit; it is rare at this stage to come across a page that has no need of a single change. Happens but rarely. Most pages are looking like a road map. Lines and circles everywhere.

However, I have completed 120 pgs. that look good enough to allow folks to read, and so I have sent these pages off to one of my most valued readers. I have plans to send them off to others as well. If YOU who have been faithful from the start here at Dirty Deeds wish to read the first 120 pgs. of Titanic 2012 at no cost other than your letting me and others know how you liked the book so far, contact me directly at ink walk at sbc global dot net (put the letters together and call on me). I will send it as a download direct to you.
All I ask is that you tell folks about it. I am confidant you'll love it but even if you have bones to pick, would love to hear this too.

I am hoping to have the next one hundred or so pages done to readability--if I can use that term in such a way--ASAP. The work is going fast and furious now, and while a lot needs repairing, it looks quite repairable.

Some writers say they absolutely HATE rewrites. Not me. It is where I get some of my best plot twists, character lines and development, setting fleshed out, all of it, not to mention fixing missed details like what happened to the sabre-toothed dog's fang or Ransom's cane? Dropped it out of story, didja Mr. Walker?

Easy to make flub after flub in the rough draft; that is why we call it rough. Now is the time to smooth out the edges and work on flow, flow, flow. That forward dynamic of action and storyline.

Thanks for sticking with me! Let me know if you'd like to see those early chapters and I welcome your feedback and HELP as I know I need all the help I can get.

Rob Walker
Killer Instinct, Children of Salem, City for Ransom
www.robertwalkerbooks.com

FINIS First Draft - Titanic 2012, Centenary

2010-05-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

The Titanic book is finished and it is pretty large...Titanic in fact at 444 pgs. I am happy to report I made it in three and a half months to this plateau, that of reasonably good first draft that needs editing, rereading for flow and sense, sound and sense, I call it. But am feeling pretty good about its chances of being an extra fine draft.

I will know more once I have printed out a hard copy to go over it as now an editor. I must take off my writing hat and put a hold on the right side of my brain and turn on the left while donning the editor's cap and visor. Have to see the lines and read them aloud and feel them as an editor now. Cut out the unneeded and unwanted, the errant comma, punctuation problems, missteps, all of it. Got to make it CLEAN. At least as clean as i can make it....until I feel I can clean no more.

Now comes the fun part. Actually, I enjoy rewrites. A lot of author fight em but I feel you can stumble on your best plot twists, build stronger more fully realized characters, fatten up descripts, tighten up dialogue and for me it is like watching a film unfold as I edit. I hear the characters speak, and I smell the odors, and feel the texture of the story, and in this case two stories.

Yes it will be one hundred years since the launch and the death of Titanic in 2012 -- wherein I set my future scenes with David. It makes good sense to not go too far in the future and this way the hundred years takes on a symbolism in the story all its own.

Well I am tired and weary eyed and bleary eyed while typing this; thanks for hanging with me this far. The journey is far from over....but now I am thinking the book may well be done done far earlier than a year. Much depends on the reRead and reWrite. ReWriting is Writing in my book.

The new title I am toying with is TITANIC 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic and I kinda like that.

Again thanks for hanging with me....been a while since I posted as have zoomed from page three fifty to 444 and concentrating on the light at the end of the tunnel has kept me busy.

Rob Walker
stuff about ebook biz at Kris Tualla's blogspot...google it
stuff about marketiing before the book is even written is at http://www.1stturningpoints.com/
Free stuff at http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Titanic Curse Novel now at 350 pgs.

2010-05-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

A milestone for a work in progress….

I started this blog and writing of Curse of the Titanic back in mid-February and in a few days it will be mid-May. I keep counting wrong the days but I figure that it has been approximately three months! I had hoped and semi-promised that the rough draft of the novel would be completed in three months, but this is AFTER the preparation in terms of research.

Yes even a “fantastic” tale, a retelling of history needs to be founded and grounded in facts….in this case the actual timeline of when and where the Titanic was built, when and where it left to and from on its trials and its ports of call, and on its fateful way to destruction in the Atlantic, its meeting with the 78 mile long ice flows like a meteor shower that Captain Smith plowed into at 21knots! Twenty four was the max the ship could get to and the fastest any ship on the high seas could go….

This is what got me questioning history in the first place, my reading…research. Research raises questions, and questions are wonderful catalysts for fiction. Whenever I see a standing mysery as in the case of what was going on in Smith’s mind to NOT stop for the night. He was the captain of Titanic, so he had the power to shut her down and stand down before this icy meteor shower ahead of him which he knew full well must be dangerous. No matter his bosses aboard, no matter the owners aboard, no matter the record they wished to break, he had the power as captain of the ship in maritime law to shut all systems down and wait it out. So why did he choose not to?

My novel will soon be completed in rough form and sent to first readers – and YOU could be a first reader if you care to be one, this novel answers in an imaginative, even fantastic way why Captain Edward Smith took action to bring Titanic down. What fears and concerns and anxiety must have been going through my rendition of the captain, not to mention the others in the cabal to bring Titanic down.

So now that I am close onto finishing, are you curious and impatient and wishing to read the book NOW in its current, admittedly terribly rough form? I am sending it out as a doc to any and all who simply cannot wait on the presumption YOU will tell me where I may have made a wrong turn, a slip up, a goof, a gaff, a startlingly stupid error….where I failed to go into enough detail….where I failed by going into too much detail…where I dropped the ball in the color of a character’s hair or eyes or condition of a character’s teeth for that matter.

Will you be among the first readers of Curse of the Titanic? If you are intrigued by the idea of “get Walker!” If you want to FIX the author, I welcome all the help I can get. After all, I was not born with a silver tongue or a silver spoon, and as I grew up in Chicago and went to public schools, I pretty much had to teach myself quite a bit about language, so truly I DO NEED ALL THE HELP I CAN GET…

So sign up now. Send me word either here via comment or direct to inkwalk at SBCglobal dot net where I live and where I can quickly, easily shoot you a copy of Curse of the Titanic once it has been completed on its FIRST go round. It will be cleaned up and I will be taking your comments seriously, and you can count on being added on the acknowledgement pages of the final product. Everyone should by now know that Curse is going direct to Kindle as a Kindle Original Title. I want it to be as error free as I can make it, so I welcome all input from yous guys…..

Sincerely,

Robert W. Walker (Rob)

Comments and requests for the book welcome

Commercial IDEA KILLER or NURTURER? Which Are You?

2010-04-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

I sat across the table from my writer friend Joe Konrath and said, “I’m going to put a disease-spreading monster aboard the Titanic to explain why Captain Edward Smith sent his ship to a two and half mile down grave in the North Atlantic in1912.”

“Fantastic hair-brained notion, man! Do it!”

“Came of research, asking questions, most notably, ‘Why’d Smith, with six messages coming over the marvelous new invention of the wireless warning of ice ahead, go to bed with these notices in his pocket?’“

To answer the question, a seasoned novelist, knows which answers need be discarded as a bore and a snore such as when Konrath excuses Capt. Smith with, “Perhaps the poor man wasn’t feeling well, just had a bad day… wasn’t thinking straight.”

“—Or he was bribed to do so by the competitor Cunard Ship Line always sabotaging The White Star Line.”

“—Or since it was his last voyage, the poor man became depressed about retirement.”

Discarded all these ideas for putting a monster on board—the most outrageous and the most dramatic or commercial answer to the brainstorming session.

Below is a list of possible replies Joe might’ve made had he been an IDEA KILLER:

10. Get a Committee to look into it...

9. Gotta be kidding...

8. You're already overextended.

7. You'll never find time!

6. You can't REALLY mean that...

5. Who's gonna believe it?

4. It’s stupid, silly, foolish, illogical, slanderous.

3. Tried it before; it doesn't work.

2. 'They' will never buy it, man!

1. Ahhh…doesn't GRAB me.

No idea is born in perfection. Give an idea a home; give it a chance to grow. Live with it for awhile before you turn it out. What was once just an inkling of an idea for me is now over 80,000 words of 'novel retelling' of the Legend.

Robert W. Walker
author Children of Salem & 50 other titles
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/

Titanic Ramblings - *novel at 275 pgs! or 71,175 wds

2010-04-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

You're not gonig to believe this. I am having so much fun writing Curse of the Titanic that I can't waste to get back to it, and that's when you know you're on the right track. I suspect Elmore Leonard, Dean Koontz, Mary Shelley, Michael Crichton, Tess Gerritsen and well you name it would agree. If your having fun with it....keep doing it. That was the advice science fiction author of many years ago, Clifford Simac said to me word for word. Koontz once advised me to "slow down, son...you don't do your best work till you turn fifty anyway!"

Well I never did slow down but I do feel I am writing at my personal best these days. My City for Ransom trilogy I felt was my best stuff...then I yanked out a manuscript that had been gathering dust and rewrote it for like the fortieth time...my magnum opus -- Children of Salem...felt it was my best work to date. Now am working on this novel with its Titanic breadth and feel it is my best work to date....

I guess I need to believe that with each book I am improving and doing my best work, wouldn't you say? Frankly, I think every author at whatever level he or she is working in terms of skill and experience is working at his level best. This is why, as an editor, I can always find something good to say about any manuscript (well almost).

Did you know I have a tendency to ramble? I also like to use my own work as examples here and in my Dead On Writing book from Wordclay and Kindle, paper and ebook respectively. Critics--well two reviewers who read and put the book to use loved it beyond words, while a third reviewers detested it beyond words. It is all subjective but if the guy didn't like it then why not just return it for the 1.99 it sells for; why harp on what he thinks is wrong with the book? In some demented way it seems a lot of amateur reviewers get a real kick out of kicking an author, a psychological feeling of superiority. And he thinks I like the sound of my own voice (well I had better to create a voice, a consistent voice for each of novel one writes.

In point of fact VOICE is the single most definitive element that defines one's style; we soak up stylve via the authorial voice. Bear with me, as we write and rewrite we aim for more and more CONSITENCY of VOICE. We want a voice that does not break with the bond established, a subtle bond between the narrative flow and the reader's ear. I like to think what I am searching for in a narrative voice for a given novel is the authorial voice...the authentic voice for this story. Authentication of sound of the bell you want the story to ring. It has a lot to do with the noise maker you choose--or if you will, the character of your narrator. For instance imagine big James Mitchener relating a dark Noir tale; switch over now to a Fess Parker (Davey Crockett) telling a story, change gears and imagine a tale told by a one-eyed Troll. What will be the center line or consistent level of each speaker's voice? Once a young writer discovers this truth, she can excel and indeed fly.

I swear it is the chief secret of all secrets writers don't know how to keep secret and shouldn't. I began writing in the voice of Mark Twain, a little novel I shaped via research and imitation of Twain entitled Daniel & The Wrongway Railroad. I did another YA years later, Gideon & The Siege of Vicksburg for which I had to find another voice. I chose the voice of historian Shelby Foote but at the time did not know it (seeped in subtlely). So whaat VOICE are you fishing around for?

Now about Curse of the Titanic, I am extremely excited as it is going along quite smoothly; I have both stories rolling well, and the Past Story is in one consistent voice, and the Future Story is in another voice but both are consisted for the authorial control both exhibit. I think that is what I mean...but that is part of it too....finding the right authorial even stentorian voice for the story you wish to tell. The range is endless but as with all writing how do you know what you want until you SEE what you write...then reread, then rewrite, then more reading it over again and rewriting further (more) and extending your command over the voice and your flexibility with this too oft described nebulous matter.

It's not so mysterious as some make it out to be, not really. But it is hugely important and all else hinges on it. You find the voice and you can plug into it anytime anywhere with ease like falling into an alpha state.

Ransom's story in 1912 is told in my most compelling voice with an intent toward finding mystery, intrigue, cliffhanger endings--all told in a controlled manner and taking as much advantage of the speech of the times as I can, remembering that Dialogue Lines belong not to the narrator but to the characters. Dave Buckland's 2020 story is told in the most compelling voice with an intent toward mystery, intrigue, cliffhanger endings (or ditto) -- all told in a separate but equal controlled manner while taking advantage of speech patterns of today and tomorrow, remembering that Dialogue Lines belong to the characters, not the narrator.

When I wrote my first novel it was carefully controlled in another manner, point of view--ONE single point of view -- Daniel's. This is a lot easier to control than multiple POV but I worked up to multiple through single. Today I challenge myself with duo stories going on at once and my challenge is to make the reader want to get back to whichever story he is not in at the moment! I personally never want to write the same book twice, not even in a series, so I find ways to challenge myself and my writing fingers.

It is true -- Curse of the Titanic is at page 275 and that means just over 71,000 words, which is super. I am bearing down on 300 pages. Most of my books come in at or around 400 but this one is moving so fast toward a conclusion in both parallel stories that I think I will be ending it somewhere around 350 pgs. Besides if I am to make my goal of a good, solid rough draft by mid-May, I want to bring it to an end as well. But I don't want to rush it or make it feel rushed or abruptly ended. If I do that some critic or reviewer will nail me for it. If need by the deadline will be extended before the book is rushed. Stay tuned. I am soon going to be asking certain people interested to READ and comment and edit if they like--fix me! Let me know if you'd be interested in being among the first to put eyes on the Titanic...or rather the Curse of the Titanic - a novel that asks the question if Michael Crichton were aboard the Titanic what then?

Hope to see you on Facebook, Twitter, and around the net
Till next time--
Rob
http://ning.it/bfYij4

20,000 Words and a Monster = Contract?

2010-04-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

56,290 words at 225 pgs. is where Curse of the Titanic presently sits, and what with my goal of achieving a worthwhile rough draft of the entire ship-less-than-shape manuscript within 3 months of beginning....after losing 75 pgs., I kinda backed off that...freaked out a bit. But it looks like things have taken a new turn and the book is flowing well, and while I still need approximately 20,000 more pages at very least, I do believe I can make the three month goal thing happen. Even though self imposed, a deadline is a deadline, and an elephant never forgets....

I began the blog and the book simultaneously in mid-February, so mid-May would be three months, and since soon my classes will be no more as college classes let out soon, I will have more full days to work on the MS. Once an editor challenged me when I called her up and insisted she tell me why she turned down a "perfectly good mystery" I had sent her. She had bought two books before from me and I felt this one I was calling Darkness Falls was much better than the previous titles. She fired back at me, "It's a mystery, and we are up to our eyeballs in mysteries."

Then what do you need, I replied. She said horror...Stephen King stuff...looking for the next Stephen King *everyone expected him to one day kill himself on that Harley he drove from Maine to New York to see his publisher.

"And one more reason I had to turn it down," Jane added, "it's 60,000 words, and we are now doing 80,000 word novels."

"Well all right," I said, getting somewhere, "you give me a contract, and I will give you a monster and 20,000 more words and turn it into a King-a-thon!"

She hesitated only a second and said, "Deal. You've got it. I need it in three months."

Since it was already written to 60,000, I had no doubt I could finish it in plenty of time. Point of the story is never say no to an editor and learn to beat deadlines, even self imposed ones. Sad to say that in today's climate, there are damn few editors who can singlehandledly offer you a deal over the phone as Jane did for Dorchester in those days. Today almost every such decision is made by committee, and what is it they say about committee decisions? A camel is a horse created by committee.

But back to Titanic, yes it is flowing well now, cruising in fact. There are some items I have to do a bit more research on, seek out and destroy the X marks the spots moments in the story where I placed in a capital X for a fact I will need to run down like precise numbers. This method allows me to stay on target and in the story mindset, right brain alpha wave moment and save the left brain stuff for another time.

I would like to say something about the rhythm of the rewrite; by this, I mean it is useful and healthy to go back and back again in a parobala fashion, going back to page one and starting your rewrite all over again even though not finished and facing a deadline. Why? Because of loose ends and missing items and details like the tooth taken from the beast by one of the miners in early scenes, and minor dies and we never see who gets the saber tooth in his pocket ever again because Professor Walker forgot about the damn thing! But not on rewrite as it strikes me between the eyes I must have it crop up in both the later autopsy scene and in the future story as well! It is a clue to the past on the one hand, and a clue to the monster and the disease it carries on the other.

With so much going on, such a complex canvasse of characters at play and on stage and so much going on such details as a tooth taken as a trophy can easily be forgotten and later overlooked but NOT on careful rewrite. So I have restored the item to its previous importance now. Worth the rewrite just to catch this one oversight.

I trust everyone is OK with my title selection, but if you are up for a Title Fight, let us have at it. I love a good natured fight and if you can defend a title better than I can defend my choice then bring it on as they say.

Rewrite is great for tighteing and making dialogue work better too, and if you do not read aloud anything else during your rewrite (I do much of it aloud in my head), you really should read dialogue aloud to make it sound like speech. Be sure to also have each character speak differently than all others, and work on each having his own world view (often subtle and part of the pistache of building the character). See my Psych 101 for Authors and Their Characters posted at http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/ or at the writers corner at http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/

And don't be shy - leave me word on comments here!

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Progress on Titanic title & Title Decision on the title fights

2010-04-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has taken me a while to get back with a decision on the title for the Tiantic book, but life has a way of getting in the way of writing and blogging and such.... However, I have not been idle as now the book has been pushed along to over 210 pages and up around 45,000 words! So since the book was begun in mid-Feb and I have till mid-May to complete the rough draft in the promised 3 months...I believe I still have a chance at making that self-torturous deadline. Maybe.

As a book builds, for me it builds momentum, a thing some of us authors refer to as a "forward moving dynamo" but in this case running two stories concurrently, I need TWO forward moving dynamos...and each time the past story begins to snore, I have to do something to wake it up or shake it up! And same with the future story!

At any rate, I am enjoying both stories equally so far, and I feel good about how each is falling into place (both stories) and how each plays into the other; the ebb and flow of each story being told with chapters alternating (an early decision for form, shape similar to Fried Green Tomatoes). This choice on shape has created a distinct flavor that as it grows inspires me to greater challenges still. It is working well for the novel thus far and a cool kind of rhythmn -- a rock and roll, if you will, is the result. I am happy with the way it is going, which is always a good thing! Hate it when a story doesn't begin to tell itself.

Now time for the title selection. First let us list again the titles as they came in and then below that the selection and winner. Those rejected were rejected for a variety of reasons, sound and sense, covering the thrust of the book or failing to, pointing away from the point, too oblique, etc. but THANKS a million for your suggestions one and all. Here are those marked off the list:

~~Ransom Aboard~~

~~Ship for Ransom~~ (Ship of Fools is already taken)

~~Titanic for Ransom~~

~~Death for Ransom~~

~~Hull Hell~~

~~Blown Ballist~~ (sorry my friend, but I think this is funny)

~~Sea of Corpses~~

--from which I extrapolated - Sea of Shoes (just kiddin' of course)

--from which I extrapolated - Sea of Sacrifice and Sea of Ice

~~Raising the Dead~~

~~Dead at Sea~~

~~DoomShip~~

--from which I extrapolated GhostShip

~~Pestilence Aboard~~ (need an exterminator?)

~~Pestilence Passage~~

~~Pestilence Passenger~~

~~Pestilence Watch~~

~~Plauge Watch~~

*special suggestion - do as Prince does, no title, a Symbol only

~~Violins Played, Death Danced~~

~~--Deah Dances to Violins~~ maybe?

-- ~~Violins & Violence~~

~~Splinters of Fate~~

~~--Shards of Fate~~ maybe?

~~Curse to Forever~~

Curse of the Titanic

~~Karmic Voyage~~ (after all J.P. Morgan was aboard)

~~Escape Titanic~~

YES, the only title without a strike-through is CURSE of THE TITANIC
which I feel covers both the 'horror' aspect of the tale and the Titanic aspect, covering both time periods in a sense, past and future. Somewhat like Curse of the Bambino, it seems most commercial and covers all the bases in four words. I liked many of the suggestions offered, but I did not feel they illuminated enough of what the story means to convey. I actually loved Escape Titanic and Shards of Fate for instance, but as some book pros have informed me many times over, it might just be too confusing or oblique.

Now the winner is a bit of a problem as it is all in the family what with this being my 33 year old son's suggestion, and Stephen does all my covers, and he really feels that this cover could kick butt in terms of fonts & graphics, and the kid doess wonders with graphics. So I gotta go with Curse of the Titanic, but hey, I intend to run another contest - one in which I intend to give away a copy of DEAD ON -- Promise. I feel ambivalent about how this worked out, but honestly, I think it is the best of the best titles for this novel. If you agree or even if you disagree or are upset with me, do let me hear about it, so I can offer some sort of restitution for all the time and energy you put into the contest. Honestly, it was not RIGGED; it just fell out this way.

Rob Walker
catch my Psych 101 for Writers and Their Characters at the Writer's Corner at http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/ Pavlov's Dog is alive and well there!

Movin' On @150pgs/Contest Ongoin' Too/VOTE

2010-03-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

Hello all -- has been much smoother sailing but I know I need to go back and do a lot of rewriting yet even so; when I do not wish to stop in mid scene because I cannot recall a person, place, or thing....as in the complete name of a character (hey, it happens) or the detail I need, a certain number say of lifeboats aboard or number of survivors, and I don't want to stop the flow of creative jucies coming through, I insert a big, fat capital X. Later, I clean up my X's when I am in editing mode; this savs a lot of grief and time. I can put a Titanic Timeline beside me or on the screen and go seek out the Xs via Replace and boom-boom-boom shoot them down like ducks in a row. I like to catch these up every ten or so chapters, and yeah, I am into Chapter Ten now! Feeling pretty good about that. Next installment remind me to write about breaks...scene shifts, how to set them up.

To date, I've continued with the order of one chapter Past, one chapter Future as the present in the story is 2020. It is a challenge to make each story as enticing as the other, and as I have said, I love to challenge myself to reach further, and this is certainly dragging it out of me.

There is another bit of business I'd like to share with you all, and that is under the heading or umbrella of X.... see, forgot but I know where I left that info., so I will go look it up and be right back.

Meanwhile here is the complete list of suggested BETTER titles than MINE for this novel; as you recall, I was using the wokring title PlagueShip Titanic and was never married to it, so I set up this contest to name that book. At this point, I may begin to ask folks to VOTE on the best title here in this list and so have something more than my mere subjectivity in making a choice. A kind of poll to help me out. Here are the titles so far (still have a few days of March left should you wish to leave a comment with your suggestion on the title and win a copy of Dead On and ack. page mention in the Titanic tome).

List is here:

Ransom Aboard
Ship for Ransom (Ship of Fools is already taken)
Titanic for Ransom
Death for Ransom
Hull Hell
Blown Ballist (sorry my friend, but I think this is funny)
Sea of Corpses
--from which I extrapolated - Sea of Shoes (just kiddin' of course)
--from which I extrapolated - Sea of Sacrifice and Sea of Ice
Raising the Dead
Dead at Sea
DoomShip
--from which I extrapolated GhostShip
Pestilence Aboard (need an exterminator?)
Pestilence Passage
Pestilence Passenger
Pestilence Watch
Plauge Watch
*special suggestion - do as Prince does, no title, a Symbol only
Violins Played, Death Danced
--Deah Dances to Violins maybe?
-- Violins & Violence
Splinters of Fate
--Shards of Fate maybe?
Curse to Forever
--Curse of the Titanic
Karmic Voyage (after all J.P. Morgan was aboard)
Escape Titanic

I know how I am leaning, but I promised to keep the contest open until end of March so there may be more titles to come. Do not worry about my extrapolation titles for if I were to decide on a title extrapolated from one suggested, the winner is same with all the rewards! As his/her title was the catalyst for the idea.

Now I recall the craft issue I wanted to take up: Notice how I did not talk about doing an outline but rather leapt into Chapter One from the get-go. Know why? Go to the head of the class. I do not myself write up an outline or keep character cards, or do any of the prelim suff save research and note-taking. Not a good idea for everyone.

I will briefly discuss why I choose not to do an outline and why it is fine for some, not for others to do outlines. Much of it has to do with how we are wired differntly and the level of experience with organizing a novel. If it makes you comfy to do an outline and keep cards, etc., by all means go forth in this manner; I respect anyone who can put a novel together in any manner he or she can. For me it gets old fast such prelim steps to writing, and for many people it kills spontaneity and again for me once a story has been told, even in outline, it can't help but get old for its author. But beware. Know thyself. If you have put together outlines and character cue cards and gone that whole nine yards only to never get the novel written, then this is not a good method or practice!

Use the practices and methods that appeal to your creative side, and remember a novel is not a spread sheet. I build it scene by scene and while I have a general notion in my head of where I am gong and where I want to end up, I like NOT to know what's coming next from page to page, scene to scene. I prefer an organic mehod or approach, allowing Chapter Two to have evolved in a natural progression from Chatper One and so on. Of course it is Writing Without a Net....and of course you will write yourself into a corner here and there, but writing oneself out of said corners is part of the challenge and excitement of writing for me...and I emphasize for this author. There are many mystery writers who write the last chapter first and write TO it.

I have never done this and it sounds like a logical way to work, but for now I do not know exactly how things will turn out in PlagueShip Titanic except that I know the Titanic will go down in the one story of the retelling of Titanic in 1912, and that someone will wina and someone will lose in the futuristic story in 2020 but at the moment I don't know if good or evil will prevail or if the creature is someone we trust in the early chapters.

Thanks so much everyone who has submitted titles. Earlier posts have gathered in titles as well. I have gathered them all together and if you wish to VOTE on a particular title or suggest additonal titles to bolster your chances, do so via comments here as it helps me keep them in order. Hope no ones done got their feelings hurt with my jocular remarks but that's just who I am. Nothing bad intended.

Thanks again and I hope you're finding the journal interesting. Can I finish this book by Feb. 2011? I mean polished and ready for an editor? I have hopes that I have not fallen too far behind this goal.

Professor Rob

Contest to Name my Next Book ongoing/Hit page 100

2010-03-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Want to remind everyone that a free hardcover edition of Dead On is yours, signed...signed by moi....for a mere comment left here on a better title than mine, PlagueShip Titanic, my working title which I am not so happy with....Also the winner gets his or her name IN the novel on the acknowledgment page for Naming the Novel. That's a double win! Competiton is so sparse anyone might win at this point! Keep those comments coming in; contest rules - there are none! It is that easy! Contest continues throughout March and if nothing better comes through the door it may be extended but hoping NOT.

Now as to progress on the novel; I have recreated the lost pages from memory, and while not word for word, I have the scenes back and intact. Happy camper but it still took a chunk of time to rewrite from my head! So I am out a couple of weeks and due to the slow start am behind a month so must annoounce now that I am not going to make the first deadline of a rough draft in three months.Darn it's going to take four at least. I am so pleased however with the way it is going that I forgive myself.

It is not unusual to have rocky road problems at the outset of getting a novel underway, getting those first scenes--establising people, places, and issues or themes down on paper; it is why we call it a rough draft. The real work comes in rewriting these opening scenes until every pore in your body is shouting YES, that's wha I'm talking about! Hitting page one hundred has that effect on me. Getting to that first hundred in writing a novel tells me the book can and will get done.

I was right to interweave the Past story chapteers with the Present story chapters sooner as it helps to compel the pace along for each separate storyline. First time around, I had two chapters opening with the Past story followed by two chapters of the Future story (or modern day tale). But giving it further thought, I deicded to tighten and cliffhang each storyline better by alternating chapter one then two, followed by three then four. Past, Present, Past, Present - like that. It has a much faster pace as a result and hopefully, the new balance will appeal to readers. I think it will; hope so.

This got me thinking along with the fact I began writing new scenes before recreating the lost ones from memory; got me thinking how most novels are written NOT in this manner. First you have the two storylines coinciding right alongside one another, and most importantly, I began writing scenes out of timeline as they do in shooting movies. I found this a challenge. I know I want that scene but have not written the previous one yet. Tricky and I know I will have to go back and read from the beginnnng up to this point to be sure I have not flubbed a lot of things that could be flubbed working out of chrnonological order. I hope my characters will all support me and be sports about how erratic the writiing is going so far, but I have every confidence in them.

I am happy so far with the characterizations and the plot; I work hard to make plot and character involved with one another. Like most of my books before this, I am dhallenging myself to do somethiing fresh and new as I am not interested in doing the same book over and over, using same formula, even in series work. I want my characters to grow, change, react as well as act. I am so happy too to be working again with Inspedtor Alastair Ransom despite his fall from grace and using an AKA and hiding out from certain authorities.

A gtreat deal more dialouge has been added, and pages are building, but there is a great deal more to go. Best get back at it. Any questions, suggestions, comments please add a suggestion on the title. To get ideas for the title think Titanic...doom and gloom, a plague aboard, karma, Meanwhile, I will keep working on the worldview and mindset of each of the characters.

Thanks and happy writing - latest Kindle titles are Killer Instinct and Aftershock!

135 ebooks with my name on the covers have sold this month at the Kindle bookstore. If you are one who has purchased, please consider doing a review of the book on Amazon.com; you would have my undying gratification (for what that's worth!)

Simmering a Book in a Year w/setbacks & backdrops & Dialoguing It

2010-03-13T09:47:00.000-08:00

We're not going to allow a few setbacks to cripple us; we must talk to ourselves...keep up positive feedback to that portion of the artistic mind that says we are frauds and that any day now, somone is going to call us out for our fradulent behavior. Yes, I get this nag in my head just like you do, and I have written over fifty novels, a goodly number of which have pleased people out in the world. Even so, I am bombarded often with nagging questions such as "Who do you think you are anyway? Are you that arrogant that you presuppose anyone or someone out there will want to read anything you have to say?" I have to fight back such negatives of course.

Then such is compounded by foolishness as in LOSING 75 pages of polished work (as I polish a scene before I go much further along). I got tired of trying to recoup the pages from my PC and opened an earlier rough version, and so started from page one on rewriting AGAIN...polishing once more the apple. I typically nowadays use this process -- reread up to where I am, write the next scenes, say one to three, maybe another chapter or two, and then I go back and rewrite and polish. As a younger upstart, I just rammed through and raced to the end to get the whole manuscript out of my head at once and then put it aside for a time and then begin rewriting this stack of papers, as I would print it out. But more and more, over the years, I began this parobala approach - two chapters, go back, rewrite to four, go back, rewrite to six, go back, etc. It works for me these days. The bad news is I am behind time-wise and page number-wise at pg. 50 rather than 75 and am still facing dredging up twenty five pages from my memory bnaks. That is my next job.

However, the setback has had a silver lining or two. In forcing me to rewrite and polish again, I located a better center of gravity for each of the various settiing both the Past story and the Present story require. While the ship Titanic itself with its splendor will be the main, primary setting, requiring a great deal of reseach and thought, there are also several minor sets from staterooms to mine shafts and shipyards; same in the case of the Present story, while research salvage ship Scorpio is the primary set, a number of other sets come into play like the busy galley, the cramped quarters for the dive team, the submersible later, and the pancaked in on itself interior of Titanic in 2020. So I was reminded that even minor sets require that there be an intimate interplay between them and the characters who stand out before these backdrops and that the research and backdrops cannot be allowed to overwhelm the characters and the human story out front and center stage.

But even more of a gift or Phoenix from the foul error and stench of flames! OK, sorry for the drama....but out of the loss of pages, I was also reminded in having to go back to page one and rewrite from there how very important that I steal as many "lines" as I possibly can from the 'omniscient' voice of the narrator and put those lines into the mouths of characters or into the minds of charcters as thoughts, or smells, or tastes, or touch. To in effect stop the lazy writing of letting the narrator do all the heavy lifting and turn it over to your characters. Let them do their own walking, their own thinking, their own talking and sniffing and kissing and caressing. Rather than have a narrator tell the reader that David caressed the iron derek, his eyes filling with a sense of admiration at the power of this ship, SHOW David doing the caressing and have David speak his mind by putting another character on deck beside him.

BESTest way for me to illustrate what I call "Dialoguing It" (it being narrative prose/snore time) below find the initial writing so filled with narrative followed by the self-same scene but "Dialogued" instead. Showin' rather than Tellin' if you will. As you read each scene, notice how once you get to dialoguing and showing, more characters come into play, more action occurs, more character is revealed, and the story is moved along with a great deal more visual components and use of the five senses. Here are the two sample examples from PlaugeShip Titanic:

THE REWRITE using Dialoguing It:

Buckland and the five other divers, including Dr. Irvin, reported to the tough-minded, former naval captain, Lou Swigart, head of the team on Scorpio. It’d been Swigart who had hand-picked David from hundreds of applicants for this mission. David had been told early on by Lou, some fifteen years his senior, that there would be no headline grabbing crap as he put it then. Lou didn’t mind repeating it for the group now where they sat in a cramped operations room.

“Nothing in the way of news or reports is going out to the press about this mission to Titanic; that means nothing about you either—no interviews, no phone calls—nothing. Consider it top secret. Got it”

Lou, a big man, filled the space where he stood beside a lectern. “Nothing said that isn’t cleared by the Woods Hole Institute PR machine. I put it to you now…simple and direct: There’ll be no freaking headline-grabbing cowboys here" He paused, taking them all in. "Not on my dive team!” He’d warmed to it, pacing now, adding, “It’s a purely scientific and salvage operation this…this expedition, ladies, gents…and so to the scientists go the spoils—whatever’s dredged out of the belly of the wreck down there. But make no bones about it, the entire structure is unstable, and what we’re proposing…well it could easily—easily turn into a suicide mission. You need to know that going in, and if any one of you decides this morning it is time to back out, your replacement is waiting in the wings to be flown out by chopper once we’re at sea, understood?”

“I do…completely, sir,” Buckland replied, feeling certain that Lou was talking about him the entire time thanks to the press that he and National Geographic had gotten on the botched salvage operation in the Sea of Japan. Despite Buckland’s opinion to not air the program, the producers had overruled him and other divers who felt as David did that it should not air on network TV, given the dire turn it had taken, costing Wilcox—who figured heavily in the program—his life.

“You don’t go into this thinking you have something to prove, people,” continued Swigart, ignoring Buckland. “This is now, and it’s hardly the Sea of Japan. Trust me, these are great depths we’ll be working at, beyond anything anyone has ever accomplished before—the real reason I suspect you’re all here, willingly…” He let this sink in before adding,“And this series of dives will prove the new technology right or wrong.”

“In other words,” said Will Bowman, grinning, “live or die.”

The room erupted in a quiet chorus of murmurs.

“I need the bread, Lou,” said Buckland. “Not here to prove anything to anyone.”

NOW here is the same scene BEFORE Dialoguing It -- wherein the narrator gets all the lines:

Buckland reported to the tough-minded, former naval captain, Lou Swigart, head of the dive team overall on Scorpio. It’d been Swigart who had hand-picked David from hundreds of applicants for this mission. David had been told by Lou, some fifteen years his senior, that there would be no headlines going out about this mission to Titanic that were not cleared by the Woods Hole Institute PR machine. That there would be no headline-grabbing cowboys here. “Not by my dive team!” he had shouted. “It’s a purely scientific and salvage operation this…this expedition, Dave, and to the scientists go the spoils—whatever’s dredged out of the belly of that beast down there. But make no bones about it, the entire structure is unstable and what we’re proposing…well it could easily—easily turn into a suicide mission, you understand?”

“I do…completely.”

“You don’t go into this thinking you have something to prove, Dave. This is now, and it’s hardly the Sea of Japan.”

“I need the bread, Lou. I signed on for the hundred thou.”

The rewrite using more Show and less Tell will be longer, more fleshed out, understandably so. True I changed the scene from one of a private meeting between David and Lou, but in rethinking the scene it demanded that Lou meet and say these things to all his divers at once at this tine as they ar about to set sail for the shipwreck.

That's what thinking in terms of dialoguing the moment, allowing characters to state things and feel things as opposed to getting it from a faceless narrator does--makes the scene! Makes it work because the author has put far more effort into it. I am floored when I see bestselling novels chockfull of Telling, a lazy man's method and quite often it is a dyed-in-the-wool professional tired of his job same as you might have a burned out teacher tired of the job and ought to step off, reflect, seek out something else to do and not cause the suffering of others as in students or readers as the case may be. How often do readers, not sure why or how but they know Author X has lost that flare s/he had in the early books in a series but gone in the later books? This is the problem--allowing the Telling, Narratives to stand whether than doing the back-breaking work of fleshing them out and allowing the play to go forward without the chorus in the corner (or the Wizard behind the curtain coming on stage) and Blatantly Telling us what to think. It is a lazy man's method, a lazy author at work--and all of us are given over to it as our brains just want to take the path of least resistance, which is TELL the story. Show the story, now that takes pick and shovel.

Thanks for dropping in and hanging with me as I write PlagueShip. I have gathered in a number of alternative titles and the contest continues until end of March. Get your suggetion in by simply commenting here.

Rob Walker
PS - my highly acclaimed Instinct titles are going up as Kindle books this month beginning with Dr. Jessica Coran's first FBI ME case - Killer Instinct.

Time And Time Again Time Wins, Writer Loses...But!

2010-03-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

Again my week was so filled with everything and anything pulling me away from the writing of Plagueship Titanic that I got next to nothing done. In fact as it is the book is sitting with this inertia-inspired grin on its face staring back at me. Ever have that happen? If so, you may want to get thee to an asylum. But books do have a way of smirking at you, talking back even, as when characters and scenes won't do what you want them to, or simply go in another direction.

This business of Cooking up a Book is no piece of cake; no one said it'd be easy, and I promised the blemishes with the smooth skin, now didn't I? Scheduling time to write can come back to bite you, especially if you have kids in the home and you are working a job. Fatigue and time and inertia all conspire against you, and when you down the evening meal with every expectation that a bit of food will energize you to do some evening work....well no, it rather puts you in a frame of mind to relax instead with the evenng news and a favorite TV lineup.

I write best in the AM frankly but when a deadline is looming, I write all hours of the day. The motivation of someone is wating on your finished product is a great help to keep you on schedule but you do not often have the luxury of knowing there is an agent or editor "anxious" to see your product. That is definitely the case with a cross-genre novel like PlagueShip as it can not be pigonholed as a suspense, a mystery, an historical thriller, science fiction, or a horror novel -- as it is all of the above with a romance thrown in for spice.

Thus this weekend I again am making time -- key word there is MAKING it, creating time for writing. I have done it in the past and can do it now. A magician's trick. You make time for those things you deem important and just plain in need of DOING. Doing is the trick and without it there is no production, no "rushes" for the day that you can go over and rewrite. Cannot rewrie what ye do not write.

That said I did get two suggestions for titles to replace Plagueship Titanic as I am not married to said working title and there is a Contest going on for best alternative title. The two I have so far are neck and neck on the interest scale but I expect more to come in as contestants have until the end of March to come up with a gripping title that encompasses in capsule form the nature of the novel. To ENTER your suggestion for a better title it might help to see the suggestions already made....then again it might paralyze you. At this point, I will await more suggestions and list these next week on the 6th Installment to give you a chance to enter fresh and without any preconcieved idea that "I could never top that!" Do lealve your suggestion for the title to win an ackknowledgment in the book and an autographed copy of DEAD ON in your mailbox by going to the comment box below and leaving word.

I intend once again to get at least twenty-five pages done this weekend to make up for my shoddy laziness of the week. Weekends, holidays, Spring Breaks, Summertime, Christmas, New Years--these are writing days where I often use time to devote to my writing. If and when I become independently wealthy with too much time on my hands, I will likely not use time as wisely and will get even LESS done in terms of crafting novels. I have found that students with less time do better work than those who have twice the time. A strange paradox that time thing.

Going to keep this short so I will sign off now and get to work on PlagueShip. Meanwhile do vistit Amazon.com to see a great review of my ebook Kindle Original - Children of Salem. And to learn just how wonderful Kindle ebooks have been to some Indie Authors like myself check out Joe Konrath's blog as it is amazing.

Thanks for coming by
And do leave any questions, comments, advice etec, you like

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

A Writer is Always Writing & CONTEST for Signed Walker Title

2010-02-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

A few remarks before I get to the Contest to Win a signed copy of DEAD ON (Five Star Books).

I have had one of those weeks that has not allowed me to get back to my manuscript; life in general can keep you so busy as to pull you from your plans, goals, tasks, schedules. I want to write some pages on the novel I am COOKING currently even if it is a few pages or even one page, but this week I had to grade essay exams along with my normal schedule and this took all my time. This and the usual stuff. So I am still on page 55 and that's not good; that means no forward progress on PlagueShip Titanic. That disturbs me and bothers me and makes me mad at myself and my lifestyle. I managed to do some other things like talk to friends on facebook, sent out a few tweets, wrote three other blogs other than THIS ONE....as I guested on http://www.suspenseyourdisbelief.blogspot.com/ and wrote for http://www.makeminemysery.blogspot.com/ where I am the new guy on the block blog. And then there is my normal Friday blog at http://www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com/

Howeveer, when a writer misses scheduled time, he makes it up. This weekend, I intend to do just that. Meantime let it be known that a writer, even when not writing is writing. What that means is that you are a writer 24/7. You are thinking about the story, about where it has been, its opening, its UP to this Point, its characters; in fact, you are thinking as if from the point of view of your main character. You are thiniking about plot points and even reconsidering that opening.

I am seriously re-thinking how I organized those first four chapters. I set it up as opening in the past and starting with the shipyard where Titanic and the creature that slips aboard are first introduced to one another, with the horrible death of the miner who discovers the terror in the deep alongside the iron ore mined for the ship builders....and after the two chapters in the past then I opened the modern day story set in 2012 with Buckland, my main point of view character in the present story. The good news is that the past story will be shaped around my City for Ransom point of view character, the great and wonderful Inspector Alastair Ransom. I was delighted to realize that finally I could get Ransom on board the Titanic and that he will be exactly where I always wanted him to end the Ransom series -- aboard the Titanic. When HarperCollins, my publisher for City for Ransom told me after City of the Absent and Shadows in White City that they would not be continuing the seires, I was crestfallen as I had wanted to take Ransom from 1893 to 1914. Horray....I get my way after all.

And next revelation is more a question than a revelation that this book is perfect for Ransom to be revived; this question is SHOULD I begin at another beginning....should I open with the futuristic opening set in 2012? In fact, should I move it up even futher to say 2020? But the bigger question is should the novel open in the future or the past? Many readers, I believe, would be more likely to be excited by those first pages of the Now story as opposed to the Then story. I know the novel wants both stories and each story, past and present have to be equally important and given equal time....maybe with more given to the Now Story perhaps but pretty equal amount of time spent in both time zones for this to work.

But the big question and would like your input folks is Do I do better starting with the Future/Now Story or should I leave well enough alone. I think I will give this a lot of thought. So is that not part of the writing process? Thinking, thinking, thinking like researching and reading? Some authors say this is not writing, but I am not so sure.

Now there is the question of the title. I have racked my limited resources, my brain, for a title and while I am not entirely happy with PlagueShip Titanic, it is the best I could come up with; however, you may come up with an ALTERNATIVE Title, and if you can come up with one that is the BEST Alternative Title in my estimation then I will sign a copy of DEAD ON and send it to you post haste. Here are the rules...There are no rules. Anyone can send in a title idea. By now you know the premise of the book and if not, check the badck posts on Cooking Up a Novel in a year. By the end of March, I will make a decision on the best alternative title and announce it here. I am blogging here once a week, typically each Saturday. The title just needs to sum up the story perfectly. I hope you can better me on a title suggestions.

That's it for today's post. Thanks for coming by and all your support. Not easy being cursed with the need to write, so I appreciate your being here to cheer me on. Can I make the rough draft in three months? Not sure....Can I finish the novel in a year? Sure...why not! I got time....

Rob Walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Dead On - Installment 3: Cookin' up a Book!

2010-02-20T06:12:00.000-08:00

Joy and time for a mini celebration as I have surpassed page fifty of the novel. It is important, actually, for an author to celebrate each and every small victory -- as in the opening scene, the first chapter, chapter two.....Now mind you, depending on how you celebrate, this can get you tipsy or bloated, so watch out about rewards but by the same token, you need to mentally reward yourself and pat yourself on the back--as hard as that may be for someone of my girth, but you get my meaning.

Each increment in the forward moving of your story along is a milestone; you think consciously of the whole job ahead of you and it can paralyze you before you're even underway. Great philosophers, theologians, even Mark Twain all implore you to take a huge task on in manageabl chunks and that is what scenes in a play are for and separate Acts or Chapters. I find great fault with the push to nowadays call a paragraph a chapter, believe you me. In fact, however, I did not always know precisely the way to organize my scenes and chapters until I began to read as a writer to seek out how other authors laid out their scenes and chapters, and I discovered in Wm. Hallahan's creepy, wonderful The Search for Joseph Tulley a champion of how to set scenes within chapters and do it well. Hallahan's scenes are numbered - yes, 1, 2, 3 and sometimes 4 scenes before the curtain closes on a chapter. I don't feel the need to actually number my scnes as he did in this novel, but I got so much from seeing him do it, and I got into the habit of writing scenes within acts or chapters.

Major time shifts...point of view shfts, major shifts of the set (setting/location) make for great Chapter Ends and New Chapter Begins. Take that to heart and hopefully you will not fall under the spell of writing one paragraph so-called chapters. Now that said, some mechanical problems and pains in the patootie I had to deal with on continuing PlagueShip Titanic once I got off the beam and completed the opening chapters. The proliferation of characters in any novel. How do you first remember all the names and ticks and distinguishing features of so many people running about and mucking about in your story? For one, I go to the bottom of the manuscript and keep a list of the complete names and possibly a title or a word or two about said characters -- but not a full-blown "chasracter card" or profile. I don't outline as you see but allow the book to unfold, and I allow the characters to unfold or reveal themselves too as the story's forward dynamo propels them.

I have indeed learned soooooo much from reading as a writer; if you read with the mindset to learn from those who have come before you, and Hallahan is just ahead of me, but the masters of the novel form, and the masters of intrigue and atmosphere, you can't go wrong. Just about every How-To ends with a chapter on Reading Like a Writer. That said how could a personality like mine NOT learn the episodic novel from a careful reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and not see its flaws, particularly its flawd ending and not learn from the good, the bad, and the ugly of this American classic? Or for that matter Catcher in the Rye.

So now the book currently being cooked up you must know has to acknowldge a huge learning curve by its author. Each book I write, too, teaches me more about the myriad choices we make as authors and where to put the emphasis, where to hit a sour note, where to do a counter-balance, where to let a bit of experimentation stand, etc. In the "monster onf the Titanic" novel, I am doing something called framing; I am framing the modern day tale with the historical one. A good example of this is Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg, wherein the past story informs the present story. In my Titanic tale, what happened in 1913 an 14 and particularly the night she sank forms a framework for the story in the near future, 2012, which in turn relies on the past story for credibility.

Who could possibly believe that there is a horrendous disease-carrying bevy of pods or seedlike eggs waiting to be harvested by a monster parading as a man or woman intent on bringing them up from the depths of the shipwreck if the stage is not set some hundred years before on the seagoing Titanic? Meshing two storylines, in a sense two novels, into as seamless a single novel as one can make it is helped along by the notion of using the historical story as a frame that wraps about the current story. If not a frame then a series of venetian blinds...back, forward, back, forward. It is an ambitious undertakiing but a novel is always an ambitious undertaking, and a good, fearless writer always loves a challenge and to challenge his/her readers as Flagg did with her novel. If you have not read her book but have seen the film, you know what I am talking about.

When last I posted, I left you with a past chapter, opening with the historical framwork. This could change by time the book is rewritten and polished; I could begin with the current day story and I just might, but for the time being, I will stay with the chronolgy as is. Last time I placed up an opening chapter and spoke of openings. In a sense, doing two timelines like this, there are two openings, each introducing a separate set of characters. It is imperative that you keep your number of chiefs to a minimum--three and four is getting high. You can bring on walk-on characters, even throwaway characters set up to die in a scene or chapter, and you want to keep a list of character names, but keep asking yourself Whose Story Is it Anyway?

Zero in on a single character (or two if you are inserting a romance) and keep going back to that point of view. A single scene or a chapter can be devoted to only ONE character. In chapter one of the historical tale, the point of view character died, so the next point of view character takes precedence. Eventually it will be taken over by the main POV character in the past story and happily, I am reviving Inspector Alastair Ransom to do the detective work in 1914 as he has retired from the Chicago PD and is living an aka life as a private detective in Belfast Northern Ireland. Reviving Alastair Ransom as Alastair Crowley in hiding from a murder trial back in Chicago was a delightful surprise to even me. He was the Sherlock of City for Ransom, Shadows in White City, and City of the Absent.

For the future tale, the Now Story, the chief POV character is young, virile David Buckland and he shares the stage with love interest Kelly Irvin (as my friend and fellow Five Star/Cengage author won a prize to become a character in my next novel, so here it is!). She has pulled a major role in the story. Now this blog has gotten long in the tooth, so I will finish here. I will place up a chapter from the NOW story below for those who want to see how the current story opens and compare and contrast it to the opening of the Past story. Note that with the current story I begin in the mind of the main POV character, and while it is a free-wheeling multiple viewpoint novel, it is David's story and he will be the fulcrum. Whether you have time or not to read Chapter Three or not, do leave any questions or comments you'd care to and I will get back to you here.

Chapter Three - First chapter of the Futuristic story framed by the historical tale:

June 10, 2012, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

The screeching seagulls overhead seemed quite out of their minds with the unusual early AM activity surrounding the bizarre-looking research vessel in its slip at the harbor. Human activity. Human excitement. It must mean food scraps for them. What else might it portend, wondered David Buckland, feeling a bit like Ishmael of Moby Dick fame, readying for the voyage with the mad Ahab.

The research vessel, Scorpio IV—four times the size of anything else docked here in Woods Hole—was jam packed with superstructure that supported two enormous cranes, affording seagulls all manner of handy places to perch; in fact, the birds patiently awaited any opportunity for scraps and fish heads to eat. The primary purpose of the two super cranes was hardly for the birds, but rather for lifting tons of weight from the depths of the ocean and positioning heavy objects onto the deck. In a matter of weeks, the computer operated, hydraulic cranes would be picking clean the combined treasures of the untapped, mysterious interior sections of a ninety eight year old shipwreck named Titanic.

David Buckland took notice of it all—thankful the seagulls weren’t a flock of albatrosses. He gave a flash thought to his reading of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, imagining he would undoubtedly run into an ancient sailor or two on this trip—old timers with short fuses and little patience for the young and foolish who got men killed at sea as quickly as scratching an itch. And what with Buckland coming off a failed mission, if the old timers aboard Scorpio knew his history, they’d be wary of him the entire way out and back.

Buckland came aboard without fanfare and no one to greet him. Everyone on the pier and aboard were busily at work. It was obvious orders were to ship out within the hour.

At the center of Scorpio, Buckland found the ‘oil well’ over which the largest derrick supported a myriad of equipment strung with cable as thick as hemp on a Cutty Sark. Essentially a high-tech outfitted drill ship, Scorpio’s primary drilling derrick stood amidships. But rather than use a traditional drill pipe, Scorpio’s gleaming derricks supported her enormous cables—hundred pound CryoCable to be exact. It could withstand the most frigid conditions on Earth, including the bottom of the North Atlantic or to be exact two miles below the surface.

Buckland, carrying his gear, now ran a strong hand along the huge derrick steel. With her electronically controlled pulleys, Scorpio could hoist anything imaginable, even a Titanic-sized bulkhead if need be. David imagined that if the Titanic were in one piece as was the case in a Clive Cussler novel years before Ballard’s discovery of the ripped apart, pancaked-in-on-itself ship, Buckland had no doubt that Scorpio could “Raise the Titanic.”

However, their mission was not to raise her so much as raid her as in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Some news accounts used the term ‘rape’ her, but Buckland didn’t see it that way in the least. It was well known that Titanic took down many treasures with her—far more than dishware—and the belief held that even the sealed hold that carried a treasure-trove of vintage automobiles would be perfectly preserved at the depths where Titanic resided. Even a sandwich in a Stover’s lunchbox at that depth would be preserved and edible. So what of the stash of mailbags crossing the Atlantic in 1914? A trove of letters and papers alone. So what of all the jewels and watches and rings stowed in the safes aboard, not to mention fixtures and shipboard items that had survived all these years—museum pieces for the world’s showcases?

It was just a matter of using modern means to salvage the treasures awaiting them from what remained inside the various safes aboard, the staterooms, the various extras on the walls, the mailbags, the silverware, the cargo holds. Yes it was all extremely controversial, and Buckland had had to walk through a sizeable crowd of protestors noisier than the seagulls to get aboard, but history would eventually prove the mission the right thing to do. The other side spoke of Titanic as Dr. Robert Ballard had when he’d last left Titanic’s ruins decades ago now—as a last resting place, a sanctified ground, a place not to be disturbed, a place nothing should be removed from. Robert Serling’s Ghosts of the Titanic prevailed in the minds of many, but for Buckland and other scientists such concerns amounted to superstitious claptrap and bad reading to boot.

“Make no mistake about it,” said a white-bearded stout fellow confronting Buckland now, jabbing at the derrick with his pipe, “this monster can hoist up an entire Sherman tank from below if you give the order, Dr. Buckland.”

“Capable of a quarter million pounds of lift,” David replied, smiling. “May sound like science fiction but there you have it.”

“Indeed, young man…indeed.”

“Your voice sounds somewhat familiar. You’re Dr. Alandale, aren’t you, sir?

“Aye—first mate, science officer. We talked on the radio. Captain’ll see you soon ’nough. Busy with a bloody press conference.”

“Good to meet you, sir.”

“And welcome aboard to you.” Dimitri Alandale, half Greek, half Scotsman was in his mid-sixties—a tall, gaunt man, who looked the picture of a graying oceanographer and seaman.

The two seamen, young and old, stood in silent admiration of the machinery before them, understanding its power, and that its express purpose was to lower and lift a massive platform on which thousands of pounds of sensing devices, search and salvage equipment, rested—equipment made readily available two miles below the surface to intrepid diving teams made up of men and a woman whose experiences uniquely qualified them. Buckland would be among the divers using the new underwater breathing apparatus that allowed divers to explore the vast interiors of the sleeping giant below the Atlantic.

He and his entire team had passed extensive tests utilizing the new technology that amounted to breathing oxygenated liquid into their lungs and essentially returning to a fish-like state in that their lungs would be filled with liquid, but liquid from which they could sustain life. It was a technology developed by the US Navy, and Buckland had been among the first test subjects. It essentially involved a moment of death before coming out on the other side, unless a diver panicked, in which case, there was no other side. Having the liquid pumped from the lungs after mission accomplished was no picnic either, but breathing from lungs filled with liquid equalized the pressure and allowed a man to dive as never before.

In any event, there was no room for error.

“I can hardly imagine being able to withstand temperatures of minus 1,700 degrees,” muttered Alandale in Buckland’s ear. The man’s large-faced, wide grin was infectious, and now Buckland placed his looks; Alandale had the bearing and appearance of the actor Max Van Sidow in his later years.

“Our dive suits are made of the same material as the CryoCable here,” David replied, giving a mock-squeeze to the huge cable. Buckland had imagined this trip and the dives ahead of them many times over; he’d imagined the giant platform at the bottom of the sea chockfull with treasures that would find their way to public museums across the globe. Treasures dredged up by human hands from Titanic’s secret interiors.

Sure I’m in it for the money, but I’m here for the adrenalin rush, too, he thought, being honest with himself.

The press called them fortune hunters, mercenaries, but there was more to it than money—far more. Buckland turned at the shouting of orders from below. From where he stood alongside Alandale, he could see that half the people milling about the pier and the research vessel were reporters, and the last time Buckland had spoken to a reporter was on his return from Japan where he’d been branded a hero for saving lives. No one said much about Wilcox. Hell, Wilcox had saved his life so that he could himself go on to save others. But Wilcox had died in the tragedy—and so far as David Buckland was concerned, he’d failed his best friend when Terry most needed him.

Buckland’s Oakley dark glasses lightened when the sun slipped behind a cloud, relieving the scene of the blinding June day. He wore a sailor’s Navy Pea coat and matching toque, looking like any crewmember as he’d hoped to get through the reporters without notice, and it’d worked. He just wanted to blend in at this point; he could be himself at sea and was seldom at ease any longer when not at sea.

His wide shoulders, height, and good looks usually tagged him as some sort of Billy Budd, but this particular Budd held three diplomas and two doctorates. His long, sandy blond hair curled up from below the hat. As always, he maintained his regimen of exercise to keep in peak athletic shape. A former Navy Seal, he routinely involved himself in various triathlons across the country and overseas.

Buckland’s attention was now drawn to a figure pushing through the crowd, a young woman who offered a reporter a sharp reply to what was likely a question about her mercenary tendencies with regard to Titanic. Buckland guessed who she might be, and he thought her stunning, and from her catlike reaction to the reporter, she didn’t take anything sitting down. He noticed how she took in the crowd, eyes darting in all directions as if searching for someone she’d hoped to meet on the pier, someone other than reporters.

Looking over her shoulder like me these days, he wondered, unable to take his eyes from her. He watched her go about in a circle, taking her time on the pier, still searching it seemed and suddenly she was looking up at the ship and straight at David. He blinked and pretended to look away, leaning into the railing, hair lifting in the breeze. But he soon looked back. Had she found who she was looking for? Was she in search of the so-called hero, David Buckland? If so, perhaps there was an upside to the hero business after all. She was gorgeous and obviously in wonderful health.

Her gaze is still on me, he told himself when he again focused on her whereabouts.

He gave her a firm nod to acknowledge their mutual stare, and he instantly regretted it. This ain’t no Woods Hole bar scene, man!” he admonished himself. She had most likely seen his photo in the newspapers or on CNN if not National Geographic. A groupie not, I suppose.

She tugged at a small bag on wheels trailing behind her, her honey-brown hair lifting in the sea breeze. Dressed in jeans and a safari blouse, the returning sun bathed her in light as she made her way up the gangplank. Tall, he thought, fair-skinned, and as she approached, he saw that her eyes matched the color of her hair. Carries herself with a distinct elegance, pride, he surmised.

But Dr. Kelly Irvin, one of his co-divers—stepped up to him and Dr. Alandale, showering Alandale with how she had read everything he had ever written, and how she felt in awe in the presence of such genius, meanwhile entirely ignoring Buckland as if he were a fixture—treating him like one of the crew. But isn’t that my act? My intention? he asked himself.

She introduced herself to Alandale and then asked where the private quarters for the dive team might be found, “So I might stow my gear?”

Alandale gave directions, and she rushed off with the older man pretty much on her arm as he guided her to a door that would take her down and into the ship. At the hatch, she insisted that Alandale escort her below decks. She disappeared without a word to Buckland. Maybe he was wrong in his assumptions about her, but she came off as rather cold to the ‘hired help’.

Buckland reported to the tough-minded, former naval captain, Lou Swigart, head of the dive team overall on Scorpio. It’d been Swigart who had hand-picked David from hundreds of applicants for this mission. David had been told by Lou, some fifteen years his senior, that there would be no headlines going out about this mission to Titanic that were not cleared by the Woods Hole Institute PR machine. That there would be no headline-grabbing cowboys here. “Not by my dive team!” he had shouted. “It’s a purely scientific and salvage operation this…this expedition, Dave, and to the scientists go the spoils—whatever’s dredged out of the belly of that beast down there. But make no bones about it, the entire structure is unstable, and what we’re proposing…well it could easily—easily turn into a suicide mission, you understand?”

“I do…completely.”

“You don’t go into this thinking you have something to prove, Dave. This is now, and it’s hardly the Sea of Japan.”

“I need the bread, Lou. I signed on for the hundred thou.” This was the going rate for a suicide dive; the money had been put up by a private donor working through the institute. Said donor had managed to override decades of objections from those who supported the belief that Titanic should not be disturbed any more than it already had been by various nations around the world—none of whom had the technology that Scorpio was now equipped with.

“I saw the spread National Geo did on you, Dave,” Lou had continued. “Made quite a splash. Just be damned sure we have no g’damn accidents here, and that the wreck you and your friends worked in the Sea of Japan is in the past and out of your system.”

Dave gave a thought to his best friend whose body had never been recovered, at eternal rest inside the hull of a World War II Japanese submarine; quite the expensive coffin. How many eulogies had he given to Terry Wilcox? “Lou, I swear to you it’s behind me,” he wanted to believe it as firmly as he’d said it.

“Good…good. Can’t have you down there with any damn ghosts, emotional baggage—all that shit.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Have to be focused like a laser. No place for idle thoughts.”

Swigart was right of course, and right to call him on it a final time today. “I won’t let you down, Lou. Promise.”

“All I ask, and thanks for dropping in. Get your gear stowed and ready yourself for the voyage out to Titanic, Dave.”

“Aye, Captain of Divers.”

It was the unspoken stuff that seeped in like water through rock to make its way into Buckland’s mind, however, that now descended on him as he entered the cramped quarters below decks. The narrow passageways, the shoulder-to-shoulder sized bunk space and single locker, it all looked like that damned sub in the waters near Japan. It made him wonder about where precisely Terry Wilcox’s skeletal remains had become trapped, but he quickly rushed from that path of thought, knowing he could not go down that road again if he wished to remain sane.

As a balm, he rushed instead to thinking of the thoroughfares inside the Titanic where he would be diving in the near future. From all he had ever read of the ship, it was spacious—outlandishly so, at least before it sank. Now to be sure, ceilings in particular would be crushing and walls and bulkheads tight indeed, but he imagined it would be more spacious than a WWII vintage sub.

Buckland and other divers had been working with the Navy for a year after their initial recruitment, but oddly enough, they had been trained at different locations and had not worked as a team. It was part of the overall strategy, according to Swigart; from his understanding the ‘bosses’ wanted it that way, believing that too much familiarity among team members in such a high-stress situation guaranteed slip ups, that a dive team too closely aligned by fidelity, friendship, and loyalty were less likely to follow protocol in a negative event or accident. In essence, that was what had happened to Buckland’s buddy in Japan. Perhaps it would not have happened had absolute protocol had been followed, but then again who knew for sure? Certainly not the commission put together to study the mishap, whose thousand page report made for sleep-inducing prose. They had admonished Buckland for failing to follow protocol when things went south yet praised him for saving the others, all but Terry Wilcox.

David stared into the small mirror on his compartment wall and told himself, “You can do this.” He had worked on it to the exclusion of everything else in his life. Lou Swigart had made himself clear. “A good dive team is a tool, Buckland—another arm for the scientists to utilize. No one under my command is going to be some hot dog. First sign of such shit, and you’re on a chopper outta here.”

A noise outside his door and Buckland swung it open on its whining hinges to find Dr. Irvin stooped over and picking up a spilled fanny pack she’d dropped; she’d spilled all manner of feminine items, and among the debris two pill bottles. “Hello, Dr. Buckland,” she said from her kneeling position, hardly able to turn and twist in the narrow passageway. “I heard there was breakfast in the galley,” she continued as she replaced everything in her pack.

“Breakfast? Sounds good. You are?”

“On your dive squad, but I think you’ve surmised that. Dr. Kelly Irvin.” She extended her hand to shake.

He balled his fist and they bumped knuckles instead. “Oh yes, read your file.”

“I should hope so. Join me for ham and eggs?”

“I’ve just begun unpacking, but…what the hell, sure.”

“Thought we oughta get to know one another to some degree. This notion we should have absolutely no concern for one another—to act like, I dunno, cyborgs on the job—I just don’t fully agree with. Do you?”

“To be perfectly honest, it’s probably a good policy—to be honest.”

“I suppose so.” Still she frowned.

“Up to a point, you mean? They haven’t been able to completely brainwash the idea into your head, eh?” He closed his cabin door and gestured for her to lead the way.

She moved along the tight corridor and spoke over her shoulder. “Well, you of all people, Dr. Buckland, you can’t completely agree with the notion, can you? That to be efficient in our jobs we have to give up being human?”

“Well it is 2012, you know, and any ahhh…human foul up could bring on the collapse of the entire world according to ancient Mayan beliefs and that fellow Nostradamus.”

This got a laugh out of her that reverberated up and down the corridor, and he reacted with a smile. “There…there it is, a human moment between us. Frankly, I don’t think even Lou Swigart can enforce what they’re talking about to begin with, but that’s just me.”

She nodded. “There is that little thing called trust; kinda necessary and absolutely human.”

“So how do you like ‘sucking it?’” he asked, using the crude Navy term for the new use of L-C02.

“Liquid O? It’s miraculous once you get there, but getting there, no matter how many times I do it, I’m sure it’s my last breath. How ’bout you?”

“It sucks! But miraculous, yes, it is. Makes me feel like Aquaman!” It was not entirely a lie. But each time he used the square-pac of L-C02 where heavy oxygen tanks had always previously rested, he thought of Wilcox and how this new technology—had they had it in Japan—would have saved Wilcox’s life to be sure. He’d be alive today only if. Instead, Terry suffocated in his suit as his air ran out, and David had been unable to get to him in time on the return down after getting Peterson and DeVries out and up. Although David had risked his own life doing a second dive too soon, leaving him with the bends, it simply had not been enough. Time itself killed Terry.

Nowadays, with L-C02, the bends were no longer a worry during a dive. No matter how fast one descended or ascended. The new lightweight tanks and what they carried did indeed return a man to his origins once the ‘death grip’ was reached and surpressed and gotten past. With the liquid air as it was called, your mask filled with liquid that covered mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. You were literally ‘drowned’ inside your Cryosuit, your every pore and orifice in the “pour” house, taking in the liquid oxygen.

Many a rat and monkey had been killed in an effort to get the formula right. Once perfected, years of tests went into it, and now, for a man or a woman, you knew you would come out on the other side with your eyes opening, your heart beating, your brain functioning, and your skin crawling but feeling! Alive, and soon your eyes cleared, brain fog gone, heart rate finding its rhythm. And that horrible feeling that you were being turned inside out like some sort of garment, finally gone, replaced by a sense of power that reflected the idea of normalcy. The huge surprise too was the freedom—absolute freedom in the salt sea.

If David expected an intimate moment at breakfast with the lovely Dr. Irvin, he was immediately disappointed when she opened the galley entryway. There they found some dozen or so members of the crew, a number of the scientists, and a cook, a ship’s dog that looked a mix of lab and shepherd, and a galley boy who looked from his day’s old beard to be perhaps eighteen. Rather than doing introductions at this time, everyone just cheered in a group welcoming of the two newcomers.

All but one cheered. At the far end of the tight galley room, a sullen fellow kept his own counsel, eyes on his food, fork pushed scrambled eggs around on his plate. A big man with huge hands, this fellow had looked up at David and Kelly for the briefest moment, averting his eyes which to David appeared silver grey with the intensity of lightning. He wondered if it could be Jacob Mendenhall, another member of his dive squad.

If so, Mendenhall might simply be taking to heart the planned protocol to have as little contact as possible with fellow members of the dive squad one was assigned to. It would explain his seeming rudeness. David noticed that Kelly also seemed disturbed by the silver-eyed fellow the other end of the table.

“Sit, eat!” said the cook like a captain giving orders.

Chapter Two continued on in the Past Story....and Chapter Four continues on in the Modern Story. Do leave any questions and/or comments here on the Cookin Up a Book Show and I will answer same here and remark on same here.

Rob Walker

For Openers - Getting the novel underway/What works NOT

2010-02-10T18:26:00.000-08:00

Once I settled on the idea of writing the story of a famous shipwreck and to rewrite the history of Titanic, and also write a futuristic give and take between 2012 and 1914, alternating chapters between the two storylines, I could sit down and begin to write. While I do a lot of research & reading to cover my behind and facts, I am always itiching and anxious to get the story underway; I often go back to the research accumulated to fill in gaps where necessary in my knowledge of events, people, etc.and pick up facts and info as I go. This keeps me excited about the story itself, the plot, and this keeps my head in the game; keeps me up.

Making these initial decisions will color the entire book from beginning to end. The first opening lines, establishing time and place and who is to "star" in these opening pages is crucial and will guide me on my way to chapter two and subsequent chapters, so I have to really nail these opening pages and nail them down. Starting a novel is like setting up house with another person; what you put on the first pages can and will come back to haunt you if they are not the right path to take.

Not that I did not have pitfalls and problems; much of the problems I faced this past week were all to do with Time...where to find it. I am teacing four classes, I have a family to contend with, and and to top off things, my AC-Adapter died the other day. Still I managed to find the time to work--to do a certain number of pages a day. Setting a schedule and sticking to it as much as possible is absolutely necessary, so I have "stiff-armed" loved ones and have told the kids "Unless there is blood, I don't wan to be disturbed during my writing time!" Still there are chores and ups and downs, cat litter to change, dog food to pick up, roasts to put on, etc. But a schedule of time or a promise of so many pages a day is absolutely necessary to make a novel happen. Apply seat of pants to seat of chair and seed the story. Or rather feed the storyline, I keep telling myself. I place the basic preimise, the pitch on my working wall to look at when I need to reestablish why I am taking this long, long journey.

I have completed some 33 pages since last I blogged on how I intend to keep a journal on the process. In these opening scenes and chapters, I do rewrites before I go on; I do so because I have learned from experience that the tone you set and the execution of these opening pages can and do become your initial chapters that will be sent to an agent or editor, and they must be flawless--without error or misstep, and as I write the rest of the book, I can use these opening chapters to already begin the process of getting readings from any and all sources I can find--feedback. If the feedback is good, I might even set up a sales pitch and begin marketing the idea as I go on with the novel itself.

You needn't read on from here but for those who want to see the RESULTS so far...well...Here is the first scene. Note that time and place are established immediately and how the story focuses in on character and action and dialouge FAST.

TITANIC – A Plague Ship

ONE

Belfast, Ireland, April 13, 1914

Slippage dust choked them. A fine shower of it rained down, creating of itself an unruly ghost-fog. It was so fine, they wouldn’t have known it was there had not their helmet lights reflected it. The earth around them groaned and stretched as if disturbed from slumber, just awakening. Tim McAffey, one of the two who’d dared enter to inspect the damage wondered why he’d ever become a miner. Then the floating grave ahead of them settled, and he thought of the bonus promised if he did his job. He thought of home and family and food on the table.

The day had ended with little to show for and mine superintendent McAffey remained frustrated and upset. He knew from experience it’d take days if not a week to get the men comfortable enough about this section of the mine to even begin to clean up the mess where some timbers had given way to what amounted to a minor cave in at best. No one had been killed; two injured and off to hospital.

Still, men were superstitious; once an area underground shook with the slightest tremor, they bolted and often refused to return unless the owners offered an incentive. Two years previous, there’d been a god awful mining accident the likes of which Belfast had never seen before—twenty seven men killed in an instant. But that was another section quite the distance, and this minor sputter, why it amounted to nothing of consequence beyond a six-square pile of rubble in the way of going forward to where it was believed the finest iron ore ever seen lay waiting for them to harvest. They had a contract to fulfill with the ocean-going Star Line—a major client in the throes of building the grandest, largest ship ever to sail the seas. Titanic, they were calling her—and Belfast Iron was already a major part of this historic endeavor. Getting the ore to the foundry and the shipyard, that was all that mattered now.

“What ‘ave we ‘ear?” asked Francis O’Toole, alongside Superintended McAffey, O’Toole’s unlit pipe extended as a pointer to a darkened corner of the beleaguered shaft.

“What is it?” McAffey lifted his flaming gas lantern toward the object, and he gasped.

“Some sorta dog looks like.”

It was embedded in the cave wall, recently uncovered by the recently fallen debris. The snout was huge, the gaping incisors prehistoric in appearance. “Geezus, tell no one about this monster, Francis, not a word.”

“Why? What’re you thinking, Tim? We could put it on display, charge folks to have a look! Make enough to keep us in whiskey and beer for months.”

“Word gets out about this we have two problems, old man!”

“Two problems?”

“Yes—one with the men, the second with the eggheads at the university. The men’ll claim it’s Satan himself at work here, and the professors will want to stop production until they can turn it into an archeological dig.”

“Aye…I see your meaning.”

“This stays with us. We pickaxe this…this ancient badger outta here, wrap it up, and toss it into the nearest river. Let it be somebody else’s discovery. I want nothing to do with it. Agreed?”

O’Toole poked at the brittle creature in the wall with his pipe only to knock away an entire tooth the size of his finger. He lifted the tooth, pocketed it, and said, “Something to tell my grandchildren about!”

“I just said no one’s to know!”

“After I retire one day.” He laughed and turned to McAffey who shoved a pick into his hands.

“So long as you tell ’em that’s all you found—a tooth. Now let’s start digging.”

The two veteran miners intended to make short work of the unusual find. In fact, they soon had the creature extracted from the wall, and were chipping away at the remaining ore attached to the carcass.

“We’ll get a tarp, wrap it, and take it down to the mill creek,” suggested McAffey, puffing now from the work. “Dump it there.” Just then McCaffey sucked in a deep breath of the mine air and stumbled to a rock, squatting there and trying to shake off a feeling he had overdone things.

“You OK, Tim?”

“Just get the tarp! I’m fine.”

O’Toole looked at his boss, nodding. He set off for the surface and the tarp, grumbling while McAffey sat on a rock and waited for his return.

Fifteen minutes elapsed when O’Toole returned with the tarp only to find McAffey bent over in serious pain, asking the other man to get him to the surface; that it was imperative. “Need fresh air…now. Help me, plll-ease.”

He didn’t even sound like McAffey anymore, so distraught was he.

“Sure…sure…I can come back later for the carcass.” But McAffey had forgotten about every other consideration. He simply kept repeating, “Air…I gotta right to air. Get me air!”

O’Toole, a big man in his late ffities—old for a miner—held his wobbly boss who seemed about to faint dead any moment. “Hold on to me; I’ve gotcha, Tim me boy.”

“Feels like I picked up something, Francis. Got no time for this. No time for sickness.”

“You’re nose is bleedin’, Tim—gushin’ it is.”

“Get me to the surface, now!”

“McAffey’s ears began to bleed now, but in the darkness, O’Toole didn’t notice. “Never been sick a day in your life, Tim, so what’s this?” he asked, but McAffey could not form words. Blood strangled any attempt to speak or to breathe. He died in O’Toole’s grasp half way out of the mineshaft in the lit elevator. By this time, O’Toole knew two facts: one, McAffey had died a terrible death, one which left his body looking like an ancient mummy with the bandages removed, and two, that Francis himself was now feeling ill. He feared what had done Tim in had now infected him. He felt the saber-tooth in his pocket, lifted it, and cursed it. He knew, like McAffey, that he was on his own way to a horrible death, and it had to do with handling that beast he’d left below.

Just then he felt a stirring in his body, a foreign intruder, something controlling his fingers to tighten around the overlarge tooth. He squeezed until the tooth bit into him. Something suggested that while he had no future, that he would live longer than McAffey had; that whatever this was, it had fed on Tim like a starved dog over a piece of meat, but that it would take its time with Francis O’Toole. At least long enough to take in the air of the world outside the mine.

“Some seed in that damned, cursed prehistoric dog carcass,” he muttered to himself, feeling an overwhelming urge to live, and to do so among other men—other men who would allow life to continue—yet a life he did not recognize. All he knew was that he must survive long enough to get to the surface. In fact it became a mantra. He kicked McAffey’s inert, dehydrated form—his skin going the way of the strange animal they’d found—off the platform to disappear into the darkness below. He chanted, “Got to get out…got to get out…got to get out…”

Some time later, O’Toole stumbled down to the Belfast shipyard looking like a drunk at the midnight hour. He passed below the huge gantry, a part of his brain unsure how he had gotten here, how he had come so far, how he remained alive when Tim McAffey had died so quickly and violently. He felt not at all in control of his limbs, felt no control of his will, yet he was alive, despite the horrible belief that some kind of dread disease had grasped hold of him. It seemed madness to contemplate, but it felt as if the thing that’d taken hold of him, somehow transferred to him from McAffey—or rather McAffey’s corpse—and the creature they’d carelessly handled, was intentionally stretching out its time with O’Toole—using him up in a more directed fashion as if it could…as if its feeding on him from within was held in check. While it had so quickly and voraciously fed on McAffey, it had now ushered in a powerful self-control. Whatever it might be called otherwise, the thing was sentient—thinking, manipulative, conniving, and it wanted survival.

It directed him to the shipyard; it seemed to want to get as far from its former prison as possible. To that end, it wanted O’Toole aboard the ship being built, a ship that was built from ore taken from the mine—as if it had an affinity for the iron walls or realized it could be the perfect lair. His conscious mind had no real evidence of any of it.

In any case, O’Toole had no choice but to carry ‘it’ aboard if that was its wish.

By now realizing himself to be just a conduit, a vehicle to move it from the cave to here, O’Toole thought of killing himself, but he had no ready method of doing so save leaping into the water as he could not swim. He made a move in that direction but was turned about, his will no longer his own. He guessed that he’d debated over suicide too long, and it knew his thoughts and was ahead of him on this.

Francis moved now below the giant letters hundreds of feet overhead and twenty feet apart that read:
T I T A N I C.

Watch a Novel Come into Being from idea to publication

2010-02-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

With the new year, I decided on a resolution -- to get a new novel underway, and while it is an idea I had visited in the mid-eighties, I wanted to revive it and start anew. It is a mix of historical suspense and a futuristic tale. This on the surface may seem a bit odd, maybe strange, and certainly ambitious. In fact this title idea is quite ambitious, so ambitious in fact that it may never see completion--especially if I start thinkikng of it in its entirity rather than in controllable pieces and parts like the varied pieces of an enormous puzzle. Imagination has me going back to the Titanic -- the infamous Titanic, a subject so many readers can never get enough of. I have myself read extensively about the night the Unsinkable Ship slipped below the waves, and due to some disturbing facts without answers, I have long wanted to "explain" these facts--odd behaviour of Captain Edward Smith in particular. And so the book begins with a huge questioning WHAT IF? What if Captain Smith, a man with a stellar seagoing record, a man on his last voyage who had never so much as put a dent in a ship in his entire career, how he could on Titanic's maiden voyage CAUSE the worst maritime disaster in recorded history--and WHAT IF he did it on purpose?

What would be Captain Smith's reasoning? What could cause this stern, steel-spinned captain, admired by all, to intentionally ram Titanic into an iceberg field at full speed, an iceberg field he knew was out there thanks to the Marconi messages recieved in the radio room and placed in Smith's hands?

So what came first, the What If premise or the research? The research suggested the idea of involving the captain in a "benign" conspiracy to destroy ship and all aboard. The plan was in fact that no one survive--and that the plague spread by some evil force let loose aboard not survive and not reach land in New York or anywhere else. Smith went down with Titanic along with thousands of souls, but he fully expected those in lifeboats too would die of the elements and exposure, accident and the pull of Titanic as it went down. His instructions to his crew were meant to snuff out all life aboard in order to contain a horrendous disease-spreading MONSTER. Yes, my intent is to put a monster aboard the Titanic in an effort to answer the inconguities of the circumstances found in the history books.

So my first efforts have been to READ, then read, then read. Read everything I could find on the famous shipwreck down to where the ore in the ship came from. Second job is to pull from the reading and research a pivotal and exciting premise via an imaginary leap. These two jobs--research and flight of fancy get the novel underway. I have done the reading over years and years. The premise has been living in the back of my mind since the mid-eighties when I started to once before do this book. Pulled away by other contracts and considerations, I have leaped back into what I am calling PlagueShip Titanic. It will take me months if not a year to complete the book as I am working around a job, four children, a wife, a dog, a cat--all of whom require pampering and attention, not to mention the visitudes of life and things like flat tires.

So like Julia-Julia -- I aam propsoing you follow me here and I will report a couple of times a week on how the manuscript is shaping up. I will discuss openings, beginnings, scene-building, chapter building, point of view, time shifts, point of view shifts, setting shifts and juggling the historical chapters (story) with the futurisitic chapters (plot).

This past week, I somehow managed to craft some 30 pages. I hope to run the novel to some 400 pages at minimum but am not at all sure I can make it that far. I hope you will wish to follow me in the progress of this "monster" tale ground in fact. The challenge--one of many--ist to get the reader to believe in the viability of the monster and its disease carried with it. How does the writer convince the reader of the IMPOSSIBLE? One important technique--detail, detail, detail.

Using examples from the ongoing work, I will discuss every aspect of the art and craft and science of the writer and the process. Do hope you will find this of interest and come along with me to the Writing Zone.

Next DIRTY DEEDS mystery/suspense blog will soon follow.

Murdery Mystery Radio Interview

2009-03-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hear Rob Walker go on for 15 minutes - Live Radio at
http://blogtalkradio.com/booksandblogs

rob walker
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/ -- FREE copy of DEAD ON when you Name my Next Novel

find me on myspace.com/robertwwalkerbooks.com
Twitter, Facebook!

Chicago Tribune gives it up for Shadows in White City

2007-05-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: THIS is a Re-Posting of one of Dirty Deeds Earliest posts:

Turning my blog over to this marvelous review garnered for my latest
exciting installmetn in the Ransom Series -- sequel to City for Ransom,
the April-May release of Shadows in the White City...enjoy the review:

"Shadows in the White City," the second novel in Robert W. Walker's
historical mystery saga featuring tenacious Chicago Police Inspector
Alastair Ransom, can be likened to getting sucker-punched in the
face with brass knuckles: It's shocking, unrelentingly brutal and
guaranteed to leave an impression.

Walker, who grew up and still lives in Chicago, deftly mixes
hard-boiled mystery and meticulously researched historical fiction
with a hint of horror to create a wildly entertaining series.
Set in 1893 Chicago during the World's Fair, Walker's novel shows us
a world of extremes: In the midst of one of the most socially and
culturally influential events of the century, an almost-mythical
cannibalistic butcher nicknamed the Leather Apron haunts the Chicago
underground, preying on homeless children. But when the short-tempered
Ransomï¿ whose investigatory methods are far from by-the-bookï, closes
in on the mysterious killer, the identity of the human flesh-eating monstrosity
turns his world upside down. "Shadows in the White City" is historical
mystery at its best."

Thriller Horror Suspense Mystery History Author is in...Home of Author Robert W. Walker

2006-07-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hello one and all,

This is a blog? No it is more than a blog. It is were the villains live. As the author of the long running Instinct Series and Edge Series, I have created some of the most horrendous, evil-doers and dastardly villains of all time. People confuse me with these guys at times, and at times I am asked, "How can you write this stuff?" My reply, "How can you read it?" Else I say, "Wwwell...I grew up in Chicagooooooo." Other authors have come to me for lessons on how to create a villain readers love to hate, and this is the litmus test for each book I do. How can I possibly come up with a more horrific, disgusting villain than the one I just finished with, heh? This is a huge challenge for me as each of my rogues are terribly terribly bad boys or girls. Yes, Effie, I have done a number of BAD GIRLS in my FBI forensic series. Some villains don't know if they are male or female. This can be fun too. But now with the creation of City for Ransom...the Phantom of the Fair is one nasty piece of work, a villain's villain that Inspector Alastair Ransom in 1893 Chicago must catch before he causes distress to a city that is partying big time with the World's Fair going on....Alastair has been likened to Holmes, Wolfe, and even Nick Charles. The book has passed muster with 3 Chicago historians--tough critics indeed. The book has been likened to Caleb Carr's The Alienist but on speed. It has been favorably likened to Erik Larsen's non-fiction title Devil in White City but on speed. It has also been likened to the films of Wes Craven. Anyone out there get word to Wes, let me know.

But my most recent villainous creation is Carnivore Man found in the pages of PSI BLUE, a novel of psychic sensory investigation (think TV's Medium but on speed). However, my psychic is half Asian, half Celtic, and ALL woman. She is picking up the psychic fear coming off Carnivore Man who senses someone somewhere...and it ain't God...sees him....sees what he does to his victims...and what he does is paint his victims with glow in the dark metallic paint so he can hang them in his 'house of horrors'. A fun guy indeed, and you may be thinking now a crass book...but wait, it is written in a lovely and even poetic voice. Give it a chance when it becomes available in September via Echelon Press.

I will be doing some appearances, panels, conferences, signings this fall and this is the place to watch for the news, along with my website at http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Meanwhile, perhaps my most fastest madest craziest novel ever is now a first-time original up at Amazon.com with their new Shorts program. FleshWar is an amazing way for you to lose weight, it is that 'disgustingly good', and it was turned down by editors as a book that literally ran tooooooo fast. Amazing reason to turn a book down, heh? But my editor at Amazon loved every hair-raising moment of FleshWar, and it has been serialized in 11 parts at a mere 49 cents per download. Parts 1-5 are up now and they are taking up space--4 or 5 spaces of the top ten horror titles on the http://www.amazon.com/Shorts list; it can also be found there under Science Fition & Fantasy category as well as Mystery-Suspense category. So go...enjoy....you'll love it.

As I said at the beginning. Creating the next, new villainous 'creature' whether a monster or a serial killer is often my toughest job as a novelist. In the pagesof my books, you will find an amzaing array of godawful creatures and maniacs. However, you will also find amazing heroes and heroines as well, heroes large enough and bright enough to tackle the worst villains on the planet. All in a context of language and literature you will marvel at as I grew up on the classics, and who wrote better villains than Conan Doyle, Alexander Dumas, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevensen, H.G. Wells, and of course Abraham Stoker.

Thanks for hanging out with me. Hope you enjoy the blog so far. I am going to see what I can do about some visuals here, so just give me time. I am new to this bloggin' thing.

Robert W. Walker (Rob)
http://www.fictionwise.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Shorts
http://www.harpercollinsbooks.com/
http://www.echelonbooks.com/