I have LAUNCHED a new collection of Short Fiction - 10 stories designed to snatch the mind of the reader for the duration of the story - each story in rapid succession. These are tales I imagined as an O'Henry strolling through The Twilight Zone. I priced them at 1.99 and placed them on Kindle shelf in a matter of hours once they were vetted and edited and reviewed.  My son did the cover as I rely on him for all my Indie titles. He does stunning work at www.Srwalkerdesigns.com  his company.

Here is where the book can be found for purchase -- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V2I1QUW/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_0N1dvb0MDGGYS

As with all my work, I labor greatly to make it REAL even if it is a truly off the wall plot with characters riddled with flaws and oft driven by phobias and addictions, and sometimes physical and emotional problems if not downright psychological issues.

Here is the lovely cover art:

OFF KILTER Interview!

An Off Kilter Interview of Robert W. Walker:

 

Geoffrey Cain, author of the Bloodscreams Series of horror novels interviews his

 

illegitimate father, Robert W. Walker, author of a few books, too, and some of them

 

are good books. 

 

Cain:  Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

Walker: How little? You mean my height, weight, length of index finger, toes?  Oh,

 

you mean like biography. We have no time here for that. Move on.

 

Cain:  What do you like to do when you're not writing?

Walker:  Write more. Seriously, I go watch Gotham, Sons of Anarchy, reruns of the    

 

Sopranos. Call it research. Been fascinated with good storytelling wherever I find it all

 

my life.

 

Cain:  What’s your favourite food?

Walker:  Dog when prepared right.  Just kidding! Stop throwing dog bones at me. 

 

Seriously, I truly enjoy lobster, shrimp, fish…but huge fan of Italian as well…and then

 

there’ BBQ ribs and Alice Springs Chicken.

 

Cain:  Who would be on the soundtrack to your life story?

Walker: Hmmm…not Blake Shelton or Garth Brooks; more likely Bob Marley or Bon

 

Jovi. Sorry…that’s just me. The WHO might fit.

 

Cain:  Tell us a dirty little secret?

Walker:  That Geoffrey Cain is one of Robert Walker’s alter egos. HA, REVEALED

 

and unmasked!

 

Cain:  What advice would you give to your younger self?

Walker:   I have no younger self; I am a vampire. Age has no meaning for me.

 

However, I do have one regret turning into an aged remorse—Wish I’d taken off for

 

Hollywood as a kid.

 

 Cain:  Characters often find themselves in situations they aren't sure they can get

 

themselves out of. When was the last time you found yourself in a situation that was

 

hard to get out of and what did you do?

Walker:  I stewed, and then I stewed, and when it was almost over, I stewed some

 

more. Let us say it had to do with a horribly toxic relationship. I extricated myself in

 

the end by moving 1000 miles away and getting a Chicago lawyer.

 

Cain:  Who are some of your favourite authors?

Walker:  Too many to enumerate but here goes – Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Dumas,

 

Dickens, Doyle, Emily Dickenson, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain again…Kipling, Robert

 

Bloch, Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Martin Cruz

 

Smith, JA Konrath, David Ellis, David Morrell, John Hershey, Edgar Allan Poe,

 

Lovecraft, Einstein, and I know I am missing some like Aldous Huxley and the genius

 

who wrote Lord of the Flies, and author of All Creatures Great and Small, James

 

Harriot (closest thing to Mark Twain since Mark Twain). These are writers who can

 

move me to laughter and to tears.

 

Cain:  What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that

 

disappointed you?

Walker:  Amazingly enough, just reread the remarkable, unbelievably wonderfully

 

written boy’s life—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Terrific what Twain could

 

accomplish and how inspiring to learn from my spiritual mentor still after all these

 

years. Worst – I tried my desperate best to see what all the fuss was with James

 

Patterson and I was appalled  instead. Will say no more.

 

 Cain: What is your all-time favourite horror novel, and film?

Walker:  Novel scariest – The Exorcist which goes way beyond the film. Film scariest

 

has to be the original ALIEN.

 

Cain:  Mr. Walker, you’re working on your 60^th book. What’s it going to be about?

Walker:  It will be #5 in YOUR and MY Bloodscreams Series, Geoffrey. Me writing

 

as Geoffrey Caine again. Last time was Bayou Wulf, almost maybe perhaps two years

 

ago. There were the original three published via St. Martins Press and now on Kindle –

 

Vampire Dreams, Werewolf’s Grief, and Zombie Eyes, followed by a Kindle Original,

 

Bayou Wulf. The new instalment is in the works, featuring Dr. Abraham Stroud,

 

archaeologist who digs too deep and comes up with objects that are supernatural every

 

time. He combats the giant White Wurm this go round. NYC is having serious break-

 

ins from subterranean house guests who’re just not wanted except wanted dead.

 

Cain:  Hold on—you and me…we’re one and the same?

Walker:  Sorry, I am Walker, and you are pseudo-Walker.

 

Cain:  This ends our interview; I am feeling a bit thin.

Walker:  Sorry…there’s no delicate way to get out of these circumstances except to say

 

goodnight old friend.

 

Other pen names Walker has used – Stephen Robertson, Glenn Hale, Evan Kingsbury.

 

 

Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge

The Dirty Deeds continues. There is much to cover in terms of Marketing With Attitude.  Have a gander and I hope this helps with your endeavors:

Marketing With Attitude

or

Practical Tips for Indie Authors

by Robert W. Walker, author of 56 Kindle titles, 33 audible.com titles

Trust me, Marketing Responsibly can be a barrel of fun, if one comes at it with the right attitude. It helps if you are, or have ever been, a closet Advertising Executive. It helps if you have a steady stream of creative and inventive ideas streaming through your skull or if ideas are being channeled through your fevered brain by the deceased creator of The Pillsbury Dough Boy or the Ajax Dutch girl.

You definitely want to approach selling of your book with a proper good emotional high that involves convincing yourself that it can be done, and then going about doing the job.

Indie authors are lucky today as never before. With the ease of a keystroke nowadays we can access our book on a site like Amazon.com/Kindle and place our book cover and description onto our Facebook wall or pin it to Pinterest or add it to our Twitter feed. This is tempting in and of itself, and historic in and of itself, but don’t do it without flare.

How can one add flare to a post about one’s own book? First get into character—the one you conjured up to pitch your book; the one who wrote the book’s dynamic description. Own that character as the way to book sales. You wrote copy for your book when you did the book description. You put copy-writer hat on for that. Now it’s sales marketer hat.

It all begins with humor and insider information that only you have ready access to. Information about your book and a self-deprecating attitude toward your book. First off, do not be afraid to poke fun at your own title or your genre. People love an author who can make himself the butt of the joke.

In addition, everyone loves a clever SEGWAY and a good joke. Use humor. Especially self-deprecating humor. For example, I might call my Instinct serial killer series “palatable—raw yet crunchy and binding” followed by a hehehe or an LOL. Else post a line in the story that might get a laugh, or a bit of dialogue that might be humorous. I will also make jokes surrounding the genre. A specific example here:  Speaking of my title Werewolf’s Grief, I might easily joke thusly:  “And you thought only Charlie Brown experienced GRIEF. It’s not easy being hairy all over.” The fine line between humor and horror is as thin or as thick as blood. 50 Shades of Blood Read Orange. You get the picture. Utilize what is current, what is in the hopper. Read Orange not Red Orange. “Blood Red is the New Black.”

Another approach to getting a look-see at your opening pages via the peek inside the book on Amazon.com for Indie authors is to work with your platform or one of the issues raised in your book. If autism, for example, is a part of the storyline or child homelessness or the supernatural, or if said issue has a part in the list of characters, highlight and emphasize the issues close to your heart in your ads. These issues would not be in your book if not important to you, and if important to you, then they will be important to others.

Finally, the tried, the true, the clichéd are all wonderful boons to crafting clever commentary surrounding your gem of a book. A quick run through of a book of clichés could really help here, but I simply use print magazines. Pick up lines, I call them. “A book is a terrible thing to waste…”  or “Here is your book, here is your book on speed!”  Open any magazine and scan the advertisements for any and all products, be it cereal or soap or electronics. Clever advertisers utilize that which is familiar. Familiar comes from the collective unconsciousness ala family. Familiar is warm and cozy.

A familiar line such as “The Sky is Falling” actually fits in my Pure Instinct where the sky indeed is predicted to fall and it does. So I’ve utilized the phrase for that title. You see an ad for Campbell’s Soup that reads: “It warms you to the bone” but for my suspense novel it reads: “It WARNS you to the bone.” I often cite the “Surgeon General’s Warning” against reading my books while anywhere but below covers, and certainly to not listen to one of my audiobooks while driving.

A familiar turn of phrase or new twist on one is an immediate attention getter, and that is what all advertising is meant to do – get attention for your book.  So you find an ad in a magazine for a muscle car that reads – “Finally, a car with real muscle and torch.”  You rewrite it for your sales ad to:

“Finally, a book with muscle, torch, and verve enough for the most jaded reader.” Almost any print ad can be helpful in posting thusly. I suspect you can find between 5 to 10 ads in a single magazine that you can apply to your book. With magic marker, mark out the word CAR and replace it with Book or your title or Novel.

Without a dime out of pocket, these three steps have helped sell many of my books. Set your timer. Go on social media for a set time, visit your book on Amazon, keystroke the link for other venues and ADD your AD. Remember keep a positive and humorous attitude. People respond to confident and positive and humorous and clever approaches to selling any product. Why not the same with a book?

In the event you were looking for more information regarding the latest Dr. Jessica Coran novel, The FEAR Collectors - #13 in my most popular series, The Instinct Series, find it here: https://www.blogger.com/The%20latest%20in%20the%20Instinct%20Series,%20Bk#13 is now available: The Fear Collectors - a Dr. Jessica Coran M.E. mystery (The ... How dark can a killer's mind get?

Merry Christmas and Thanks to all my READERS and future READERS!! Rob Walker

Sunday Mornings and TIME...

find me all over the place...

Sunday, Sunday... a day to take stock of all that we have accomplished during the previous six days... a day of respite and relaxation but for most writers, also a day of serious reflection.

An author is nothing if not a clock watcher. How much can get done in fifteen minutes otherwise wasted? Time is a useful tool that a prolific writer puts to work at every turn, which may well annoy hell out of those around him or her, and yet we all know nothing gets completed without our noses to the grindstone, and we only get there, to that grinding when we use our time wisely.

Setting goals begins with time at the job. Treating one's writing as a job or career puts us in the frame of mind that we need a schedule, and if not a schedule an attitude that prompts up to get things done and use our time well in the process.

Putting work off and off and off as a procrastinator is only good and worthwhile during the staging or planning or research phase of writing a full-length work of fiction or nonfiction for that matter. Pages only accrue if we put in the time.

People call time a man-made artifice and as true as that may be, we still have to use it and not let it use us entirely; that is allow time to wash over us as if we have NO control over it. In order to get a novel thought out, organized, written, edited, rewritten to completion, we must rope time and ride it like a bucking bronco--that is, if we really and truly want to have a finished product at the end of our labors.

While writing may be a labor of love, it is also the product of a great deal of blood, sweat, tears, and TIME put in. Without being conscious of time and ignoring it as a useful TOOL for the author, said writer will accomplish less, lesser, less still.

Time is a precious commodity; give over to it those things you prize. If you truly prize writing, you will create a time and place for it to happen. And yes, a writing space/place is just as important - a setting where one can utilize writing time without the many distractions that are pulling at us all the TIME. Distractions that rob us of our time at the keyboard.

Dirty Deed Done of Late...

This year I have been extremely busy, and as a result have had to put aside blogging for awhile...a long while. I have done two new Instinct Series titles, #12 & #13. The Edge of Instinct was completed last January or so and placed up for Kindle publication. It is a combination book, that is it combines the Edge Series characters with the ensemble from the Instinct Series. The Edge of Instinct has a lovely, distinctive cover by the way, done by www.srwalkerdesigns.com and looks like this:

The novel is also an audible.com title as well, along with many other Instinct and Edge Series titles. I have placed up 37 audible.com titles this past year and a half.

The other Instinct title is  The FEAR Collectors - #13 in the Instinct Series, and it takes a whole new twist. These last two titles come after Jessica Coran has retired from the FBI, but she is continuing as a 'gun for hire' as a consulting profiler and medical examiner. She's as tough and as strong as ever.  Here is the cover art for The Fear Collectors also done by my favorite cover artist listed above:

This title is a Kindle ebook only. I will eventually get it into audible.com and like oher of my works, hopefully get it into paper via Createspace.com  The Fear Collectors puts a whole new twist on Dr. Jessica Coran, showing that she can still GROW and Flourish...but it comes at terrible price.

In addition to the two above titles completed over the past year, I also dredged up an older manuscript that I feel is an important story that does for the American Indians what Glory did for the Black soldiers of the American Civil War.  THE RED PATH - Indian Brigades in the Civil War is what I am referring to. I have a hugely soft spot in my heart for this title. I cannot count the number of times I have written and rewritten this book, first attempts being a nonfiction title. Finally, I went back to what I know and turned it into a historically accurate account intertwined with an imagined romance. Here is the cover art here, also done by www.srwalkerdesigns.com :

This title is only available for now as a Kindle eBook (and via Kindle app. of course). It tells the true story of the Indian Brigades who fought on the side of the North and the South. Per capita the "state" of Indian Territory lost more men in the war than any other state in the Union or the Confederacy. Per capita, that is. Many lives lost when brothers of the same campfire came to blows in the White Man's War.  I mix in a romance to keep the pot boiler boiling.

In addition over the past 14 months, I also rewrote two other early novels for the Young Adult market. One was strictly a boy's book on how George Washington's first artillery 'fell' into his hands. A fascinating historically accurate account mixed with a coming of age imaginary tale of Ben Cross & The Guns of Ticonderoga. Cover art below done by same graphic artist company:

This title is a kindle eBook but also a wonderfully narrated audible.com title. I love what the narrator did with this novel. Stirringly read!

Finally, in this same 14 month time-period, I just completed a 3rd novel lifted from my old trunk. This one a Young Adult historical romance set during the time of the Black Hawk War in the Fox River Valley, Illinois entitled ANIMIKI & The Keepers of the Fire. It has been such a pleasure doing these YA titles, and they really can be appreciated by any age group. Here is Stephen R. Walker's cover art again (my son, the genius):

This title is at this time a Kindle eBook only. Eventually hope to get it in audible.com with the same narrator who did such a tremendous job on The Canoneers. This tells a love story--an Indian love story that moves our hero to great lengths but it is a young adult historical romance and a coming of age story that can be appreciated by anyone of any age.

So as I said, I have been extremely BUSY of late.  I am hoping to revive the Dirty Deeds blog here.

Thanks for reading this far!

Rob Walker

Pure Instinct by Robert W. Walker - Narrated by Ted Brooks

A Writx Process Blog: Does My Writing Process Make Sense?

Roxe Anne Peacock invited me to do a Writing Process Blog, so here I am doing it. Roxe is the author of Leave No Trace, Fatal Catch and The History Lover’s Cookbook. Her decade-long participation in Civil War reenactments and an avid interest in history inspired the above-mentioned cookbook. View her blog at

at http://www.civilwarcooking.blogspot.com/

Blogging it forward, I will invite 3 other authors on to answer questions about their process in writing the dirty deeds they commit to paper.  I will ask the same four questions of myself here of them:

What are you currently working on?

I have been working slowly on a new crime novel entitled The Fear Collector, but progress has been slowed by life problems for one, but also due the fact I am engaged currently in putting up my previous 55 titles now on Kindle onto audio book format via acx.com and consequently Audible.com and iTunes for sale. I currently have completed nearly 20 titles ready and selling, but am in various stages of producing 27 other titles. This means I am a busy fellow along with teaching four classes....sigh.  Thusly, my work in progress has had to take a back burner. Still it is halfway completed.

Why do I choose to write the kind of novels and short stories I do?

I have a warped, sick sense of things such as life and death, I suppose. While I write in a variety of genres from strictly horror with monsters abounding, I also write psychological suspense thrilers, forensics files, young adult, alternate history, history-horror, and paranormal detectives. I do add touches of science fiction and romance into some titles, and some I call Hystery Mystery. As a child, I was reared on One Step Beyond and such as The Twilight Zone. Look at it this way, heroes are Rod Serling and Mark Twain, so I blend dark humor in with the frights and high praise for me is when a reader tells me she literally threw my book across the room, hit the cat, cat leaped and landed on sleeping hubby, woke him...then she with flash light in hand goes to retrieve the offending book to finish it off.

How are your books different from others in your category?

My novels are shockers no matter the genre I am writing in, and as I have said above, I delve into many categories of fiction. I have seen other authors triangulate a few of the five senses in a scene, which is good, but I go for all five whenever, wherever possible, and when I cannot legitimately scare a reader with psychological frights, I will go for the jugular every time. Mine are filled with action, a sizable seismograph and no straight line story is going to come out of me.  Twists and turns are my watchword along with making the reader the main character. By that, I mean for the duration of the novel, I want to hold the reader complete enthralled. To that end, I pull out all the stops to the locomotive of the forward moving dynamo of the plot built around memorable characters.

How Precisely do you worm a book out of your head?

One scene at a time. Start with a character's hands busily at something...you are already in action and in the middle of things. Build this scene out of which the next will flow. Trust your story and your establishing opening shots. If they are good and true, a second scene will organically suggest itself to you from your own reading of scene one.  When young, my approach was to get the book entirely out of my head, finished, kaput so that I would have a product on paper to then go in and WRITE for real - rewrite, painstakingly so. My process has however evolved so to speak, as now I do a couple few chapters, go back, reread up till what I have completed, and then carry on to the next few scenes, then go back, re-read and re-edit again as I go, rearranging as I go in much more an ocean wave, parabola fashion. Comes with experience, I suspect

For more detail on all my process and method and tools, get hold of my How-To for the Dysfunctional Writer in Us All  entitled  DEAD ON WRITING, an ebook soon to be an audio book.

I am going to attempt to get 3 additional guests authors to speak to these same concerns/questions. I will attempt to get as my guests Les Robert, John Everson, and a surprise guest #3 - if I can get him....Ed Gorman, and if not Harry Shannon.

NIKOLAS BARON - Guest Blooger @Dirty Deeds / To Make Editing a BREEZE

GUEST BLOGGER - NICK BARON  with a great article on easing the pain of EDITING and PROOFREADING -- I love what Nick has to say here.  Enjoy and do SHARE!

Rob Walker's Amazing Class for Writers

Take my class - in six weeks you will learm more about writing and have more insight into your own writting than any handful of classses in creative writing you have ever taken. I take 30 of your pages and turn them into a workshop as together we autopsy your style and if you can take it, we find out what might well be keeping you from commercial success but in plenty of rejection slips. Six weeks of access via email with yours truly. Only complaint I ever got was to be called a Butcher, a compliment really to a developmental editor.  Payment is a mere $90 and it could change your life as it has many previous students.

If interessted, contact me at inkwalk at SBC global dot net.

Now go read some of my articles below.

Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
 

REGARDING Reviews on Amazon.... been a long, long-standing argument as to how important they are...how much people do or do not pay attention to them. The often vile, personal attacks by noids and jealous people who are frustrated, cannot themselves get published legitimately or any other way, have not figured out how to write themselves, etc is RAMPANT on there, and few have been as attacked by ridiculous one-star enthusiasts as I have.

The EXACT SAME book side by side with the vile personal attack on the author goes hand in hand with thoughtful 3, 4, and 5 star reviews. Often a RAVE review from a reader then is summed up as the author's buddy or mother. Frankly, my mother has an opinion of my work. She thinks it is terrifying and filled with way too many curse wrods and OMGs and Jesuses, etc. She will hammer me on taking the Lord's name in vain.

That aside, reviews are only helpful in how they can be culled and stripped for use as a marketing tool, so anytime anyone anywhere - not necessarily on Amazon - has a kind word to say about your book or your skill in writing then it is encumbent upon you to SPREAD that word wherever. whenever you can. I quote my readers who comment on my books on facebook and twitter as well as tossing up reviews from Amazon onto my facebook page, and I do drive twitter and facebook friends to where they can find reviews on amazon but also on any blogs, etc.

A review, even a 3-star, can be very helpful and enticing. I often use the TITLE of the REVIEW and url to garner interest because many Amazon reviewers have quite imaginative and descriptive and complimentary TITLES. Of course the one-star titles will be awful, but I have even done this with one-star reviews just to LAUGH in the face of them, but HIGHLIGTING them and showing them up for the stupidity that 99 percent of them are. Yes LAUGH at it. For instance, the idiot who judged my entire 140,000 double-novel TITANIC 2012 purely on the basis of the cover art. The reading of the book will have explained in no uncertain ABYSS dive style that we do have the technology in the book to make a DIVE INTO a shipwreck 3000 miles below the surface POSSIBLE. The book explains it; the cover depicts it. The SAME for BISMARCK 2013 also some 3000 miles below the surface.

Never judge a book by its cover UNLESS it makes you BUY mine! LOL. For that reason, make your covers sparkle and jump off the page.

Anyhow back to reviews. You might want to do this which is how I got a lot of reviews. I posted on my FB Wall that I would GIFT a copy of the book to anyone willing to read and review it on Amazon. No strings attached save that one provios. Free book, free review to me.

Not everyone who takes you up on the offer comes through for you; some will disappoint you, but some will come through for you and it is worth it. Worth your paying for the book to get that review. Is it underhanded? Hell no. Every publiher sends out FREE REVIEW COPIES by the hundreds, and they get back a very small percentage of return on that investment but if those few revews are good to great, then you can use them forever. Clive Cussler called my first Instinct title, Killer Instinct "MASTERFUL" and my then publisher in NYC used that single word culled from his remark that I did female characters far better than he could ever hope to for years afterward on all my 11 Instinct titles thereafter. 

Do feel free to leave a comment; let me know you've been by....

So GET reviewed by going AFTER reviews.

Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com

WHO'S  IN  CHARGE - THE AUTHOR FOR FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, THANK YOU!


You want to know what I think is sad in all this new finagled (newfangled?) publishing paradigm? What is sad is that over the MANY years before Kindle was born and longer still before Amazon showed up on the scene, publishers - big publishers - and distributors - big time distributors were eating up all the smaller fish in the pond. Gobble gobble toil and trouble. It comes as no surprise to anyone who had been in the publishing Casino (it is more a horse race or roulette wheel than a business in my estimation)...anyhow anyone in the casino for my time in knows that now that it has come first down to the big SIX publishers left and maybe fewer big Distributors of the units you and I call books, we will not be surprised to learn it went down recently to the Big FIVE... and rumors on the horizon calling it soon the BIG THREE.

Imagine that, every publishing company in the US controlled by three corporations. So much for mom and pop publishers? Certainly, any that had any large following such as Algonquin Press is now under the umbrella of a major corp.  Ten Speed Press. You name it.  And while there remain small presses out there, many with extremely high standards from Krill Press and Echelon to Five Star and more, the shrinkage in publishing outlets has been a horror show to watch.
                                                                             

                                                                              

What has it done for authors? It has put us all on alert and many of us who are too smart to wait around for a year or more to sell a book, then a year or two to see it actually published, all the while making NOTHING in the way of green, no way to pay the bills in such a system... well the smart
ones among us, we have GONE fishing....NO  not fishing, we have GONE Indie Authorship; we have become our own bosses, we have become intrepid entrepreneurs thanks to Amazon.com/kindle ala www.kdp.amazon.com

At this site anyone can publish at no cost and you go into an immediate mode of publishing partnership with Amazon. This means as Barry Eisler encouraged all of us BEFORE kindle to do -- take charge of our own Writing Business. That means we become public relations and marketing, we become the guys who give thumbs up or down on cover art, and we write our own book description, and we become our own bandwagon and sales force.

I know that sounds tough and it sounds like you are giving up much too much in the way of BIG MAJOR Publisher coddling you and sending you on jet planes across America and putting you name up in lights and on marquees (bookstores ought to have marquees over the top!). But guess what, by the time you become the next Janet Evanovich or Stephen King or even Stephen Hawking, you will have cobwebs growing out your ears. While in the meantime, you can publish that book and begin sales in an hour or two.

Way back in 2005, Award-winning author Barry Eisler, author of the famous Rain books as in Killing Rain, wrote in MJ Rose's blog (another major author) that writers need to quit bellyaching about their poor sales and poor relations with their publishers and take control instead. Treat their quite artistic productions as business people by putting on the entrepreneur's hat. Seven YEARS ago a lot of us were saying you have to treat your work as best you can as a business venture, and Barry laid out a long list of process and method to get you there. It was reprinted in the infamous newsletter put out by the MWA - mystery writers of America - The Third Degree.  The point of my blog -- by going Indie Author ala Kindle or any other ebook process, we smart guys who beat our heads against the NYC curtains and walls of NYC publishing have freed ourselves of untold burdens that frankly no one ever wanted to hear us complain about, so I won't complain about them here. What I will say is the discovery of one's courage in taking the leap of faith, and the discovery of a new found freedom among the new fandango of a new publishing reality has been WONDERFUL and PROFITABLE.

Rob
www.robertwalkerbooks.com


 

I have gotten away from blogging for some time....Had been terribly busy with all manner of other things too mediocre to list here.  Suffice it to say, am getting steam up to reestablish DIRTY DEEDS here.  I hope to at least blog once a week and have some guests bloggers as well.

So watch for it!  I will post when and where I can as new blogs go up.  Most will hopefully be of use to readers and writers alike as well as all book folks.

Rob

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