Recently was asked a question via my website at www.robertwalkerbooks.com and it went a bit like this:  "Knowing you are quite the experienced author and enjoying the hell out of your City for Ransom series, I have to ask:  How do you deal with rewrites from agents, editors, and publishers?  I work a full-time job and find it extremely frustrating after having once told the story and pounding out hundreds of thousands of words only to be told it needs a complete rewrite.' -- thanks, Jackie Chan

OK...I changed the name to Jackie Chan. But the question remains and here is my reply to Jackie:                                                 

Hello -- your question is one that will rarely be answer the same way twice, but for me REWRITING is where I make so many "aha" discoveries that really and finally improve and characterize the book to make it as unique as it can be. I worked briefly with your agen Xavier Holecraft (not her real name), so I know how frustrating it can get; I pulled out when after a year or so she was unable to place anything I sent her, and yeah, she wanted a lot of rewrites. I don't hesitate to rewrite but after so many hurdles one gets well...frustrated.

I finally got those Ransom books sold after they were turned down by EVERY publisher known to another agent who represented them. We'll call him Calvin Jeans, a fellow I fired TWICE. Agents frustrate me as much as do publishers. If working with a traditional publisher, I prefer doing a partnership/rewrite with an actual EDITOR in house. If I am workking with a publisher.

I say if because for my last book done with a publisher we'll call Zenith Press (made up name) while they were happy with the sales and pocketed what they considered enough to make them happy, I earned very little, a pittance. After that, I took the same book and priced it at 2.99 as an ebook and have made some serious money, thank you! This after getting all my out of prints "in print" as ebooks. Some forty titles that I feel publishers looked on as midlist and with no or little enthusiasm. The Ransom titles are as good as I get, and yet they did not earn out; I say it is due to the piss poor way they were handled and given short shrift by the publisher as my editor was gung-ho over them while the pblisihing house simply did not know what they had in hand. (Your letter was prompted by your reading of these books and how you loved them.)

My last six or so titles have been Original to Kindle ONLY titles. I have extended 'dead' series as a result, placed Ransom on board Titanic 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic, did my Bismarck 2013 - Hitler's Curse without anyone telling me no one would want to read an alternate history of the greatest battleship in history. I also publsihed what amounts to my life's work, a novel turned down by EVERY publisher and agent, inlcuding Chan and Calvin -- Children of Salem.

 My first agent, who has since passed away, said of my Salem Witchcraft title 30 years ago, "I love it, Rob. There are scenes I cannot get out of my mind, but in this market, I can't sell it." I got the same sort of response from every place I sent it--and it went everywhere. As an ebook, it is doing very well and has found an audience.

 So....as far as rewrites, imagine how many times I had to rewrite Children of Salem -- off and on between doing 8 series characters over 30 years! So I may not be the best person to ask regarding "Are rewrites necessary" as in my 'book' they are absolutely necessary, and so far as I am concerened, editors are a fantastic help (not so sure the 'editing agent' is anywhere near as helpful--least not in my experience).


 Man....so in the end, yes, REWRITNG is WRITING so far as I know. Frustrations abound in dealing with agents, editors, and publishers but the real hurdle to a reader's GETTING you, following you, understanding you is YOU.  Don't get in the way of a good edit. Once you get editorial corrections take them like ducks in a shooting gallery and deal with each in turn. Some will be minor, grammatical, logic issues, while others may require a rethink of format, plot, characterization. Take them each in stride and realize the best for the book is not always one's own myopic view.

Good luck and happy REWRITING.
Rob
www.robertwalkerbooks.com

Life doth slow a writer down...

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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!

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!

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

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