Radioactive Communist Zombies

Agent of Artifice

Now available from World Castle Publishing: Agent of Artifice.

They live among us. We know they are there. No government can control them; no authority can stop them. Some are evil. Some are good. All are powerful. They inhabit our myths and fairy tales. But what if they were real, the witches, wizards, and fairy godmothers? What if they were called "adepts" and were organized into guilds for mutual protection and benefit? And what if they started mucking around with the affairs of "lessers" (that is, those humans not able to match their powers)?

During the height of the Cold War, Michael Vaughan is a rogue without a guild. He survives by working for the CIA as NOC (Non-Official Cover). Shortly after the funeral of President Joe Kennedy, Jr., he is sent to Cuba to assassinate Castro. There he finds himself in a cat-and-mouse game with adepts working for Fidel.

Available as an eBook direct from the publisher, or on the Kindle, the Nook, on Smashwords eBooks, and trade paperback.

LImited time: The Kindle version is on sale for $3.99 and FREE for Amazon Prime members!

Reviews for Agent of Artifice:

Five out of Five Stars at Simplistik Halloz Books.

Five out of Five Stars at Library Thing

Five out of Five "Golden Hammers" at Mind's Eye U Magazine

4.5 out of Five Stars at Lindsay and Jane's Views and Reviews

Four out of Five Stars at The Draven Witch Series Blog ("A 5 star rating is very hard to get from me. Not that I'm a mean old witch but there are certain things that I require for a 5 star . . . I absolutely loved his book.")

"Agent of Artifice is an exciting adventure that you will not want to put down until the end" from A Tome is Where the Heart Is.

"It’s a great read. You’ll like it too. I truly recommend reading it" from Lissette E. Manning

Amazon.com Five-star review

Amazon.com Four-star review

Goodreads.com Four-star review

Hammer of Thor

Also now available from World Castle Publishing: Hammer of Thor.

They live among us. We know they are there. No government can control them; no authority can stop them. Some are evil. Some are good. All are powerful. They inhabit our myths and fairy tales. But what if they were real, the witches, wizards, and fairy godmothers? What if they were called "adepts" and used talismans to increase their power?

The most powerful talisman in the world is the Hammer of Thor and Hitler stole it from its rightful owners, the Valkyrie. When American adept Francis Kader is reluctantly drawn into the effort to retrieve the Hammer from the Nazis, he begins a journey that leads him to a confrontation with Thor himself. Can a mere human hope to defeat an immortal god?

Available as an eBook direct from the publisher, or on the Kindle, the Nook, on Smashwords eBooks, and trade paperback.

Reviews for Hammer of Thor:

Five out of Five "Golden Hammers" at Mind's Eye U Magazine

Four out of Five "Espresso Shots" at Fuzzy.Coffee.Books

Four out of Five "Dragons" at Azure Dwarf's Horde

"A very interesting read and one that I would have no problem recommending." from Carabosse's Library.

"Hammer of Thor is a non-stop adventure from beginning to end. It sets the bar high and does not disappoint." from A Tome is Where the Heart Is

Amazon.com Five-star review

Amazon.com Five-star review

Amazon.com Four-star review

Headline of The Day

Headline writing is a tricky business. In just a few words the headline writer has to convey enough information to get the reader's attention and summarize the story (and sometimes be misleading, but that's a whole 'nother subject on media bias).

Sometimes headline writers don't quite get it right.  As in this headline from the Seattle Times website today:

Sultan woman with dog's head taken to hospital

Is it just me, or does it sound like the woman from Sultan (a small town in Washington State) had the head of a dog.  That is, was cynocephalic.  Reading the accompanying story it makes it plain that she was carrying the severed head of a dog.  So how could that headline be better?  Maybe "Sultan woman carrying dog's head taken to hospital"?

Writing is a tricky thing.  It is sometimes hard to get across in words what you mean when you can't use body gestures, tone of voice, facial expressions, and other clues to convey the message you intend. And sometimes there's a funny failure like the above headline.

Affect the Effect

I used to never have problems with the difference between "affect" and "effect."  But I just noticed in my recent post about the future of the automobile that I used "effect" three times when I should have used "affect."  I didn't have this problem before I started working with someone who regularly got effect and affect confused.

Anyway, a professor at Washington State University, Paul Brians, has a great website (that looks to be about 10 years old) that explains a lot of common errors in English usage.  His discussion on "effect" and "affect" is very interesting reading.  There's actually five distinct words spelled either effect or affect.  But the key to remember is:

When you affect a situation, you have an effect on it.

Then there's the psychological term "affect" which means how a person presents themselves and there's to "affect a French accent" and there's "personal effects" and "special effects" and someone can "work to effect a change."  Yes, it's confusing.  As the good professor says, "Hey, nobody ever said English was logical: just memorize it and get on with your life."

I'm going to try to remember to not confuse "affect" with "effect" anymore.  Or I could say I'll try to effect a change in my writing with regards to my usage of "effect" and "affect."

More Shrugging

As a writer, I often, when watching movies, T.V. shows, or reading a book, tend to rewrite.  I often think "How would I write this?"  Often times I can't improve on what the original writer composed.  Sometimes I can (in my humble opinion).

I've already talked about the movie Atlas Shrugged based on the thick tome by Ayn Rand (my paperback version is 1074 pages of tiny print).  The book is dense and preachy and long and full of pedantic speeches.  It doesn't translate well to the screen (the movie, which billed itself as "Part I" avoided the long monologues of the part of the book it covered).  But the writing of the movie (based on the book) could have been better.

P.J. Rourke made the sensible suggestion that they should have set the movie in an alternate past (a “future of the past” he calls it), such as set it in 1962 as if Rand's predictions had happened.  The problem being this low-budget production would have had to spend a lot more to recreate 1962 America.

But there was one scene in the movie where I thought the movie writers failed completely.  They'd already explained that flying and driving were too expensive (gas was reported to be nearly $40 a gallon and no, that's not a typo).  So people were taking trains again.  I was okay with suspending my disbelief for all that.

But there's a quick scene, probably taken right out of the novel (been too long since I read it to be sure) where the heroine, Dagney Taggert, comes out of a train station and a man is standing there selling newspapers on the street.  You know, like they did in 1957.  Dagney buys one and reads something important that moves the plot forward.

But the movie is set in 2016.  Even today no one sells papers on the street.  I'm 50 years old and a never remember seeing anyone sell newspapers on the street.  And fewer and fewer folks get there news from newspapers.

How should that scene have been written?  Dagney is sitting on a train looking at her smart phone when she gets a news alert (I get them on my phone) and she opens an app and reads the important news.  And she's stuck on the train, adding to the tension of the scene.  She gets off the train and rushes to get a car (I have to admit, I don't remember what the important news was and what happened next in the movie).

As I said before, the makers of this movie set themselves up for a nearly impossible task.  And they didn't rise to the challenge (as, say, those who wrote and shot the Lord of the RIngs trilogy).

Maybe "Part I" will make enough money the film makers can make "Part II."  And maybe they'll do better.  But I wouldn't count on it.

I Am Not a Charity

Just a random rant:

Why is it that some friends/relatives think I should give them free copies of my book?  After investing hours of my time researching and writing it, traveling to Chicago, San Francisco, Key West, and Seattle to get the facts correct, after investing blood, sweat, tears, talent, and yes, money, I should give away my product?  If I owned a store, would you expect free merchandise because you are a friend/relative?  I am not a charity.  I gave away three books for thanks to proofreaders and artists.  But I need to make back the money I invested (I'm apparently going to donate my time).  That means I need to sell my book.  Yes, I'd love for you to read it, but I need you to pay for it, too.

Rant over.

I Hate Typos

Seems lately I've been making more typos on this blog.  Of course, I've been blogging more.  That could be it.  So I apologize to my readers (both of them) for the numerous typos on this blog.

Writing Lessons: Lesson Five, Rules for Writing

This is day five of lessons about writing.  Since I did these in no particular order, I am doing now what probably should have been done first.  But instead, I started with choosing the right words, then how to avoid word repetition, then show, don't tell, and finally dialogue.  Now I'm going to discuss the basic rules of writing if you want to try to get published.

1: Your manuscript must be double-spaced, typewritten (computer printout) with at least one inch margins all around and a proper header.  If you Google "manuscript format" you'll see lots of examples all of which don't agree in some details.  But if your manuscript is neat, clean, and double spaced with wide margins, the details probably won't matter.  There are no exceptions to this rule.  There was a movie in the '80s called "Funny Farm" where someone submitted a hand-written manuscript and it was accepted.  Would never happen in real life.

2: Spelling and grammar must be correct (I know of one exception).  Characters may speak ungrammatically, of course.  But your grammar needs to be correct.   Proofread it until it is prefect (yes, that's a joke).   If you read this blog you know I'm a horrible proofreader.  If you're a horrible proofreader, find someone who isn't.  Another thing I find helps is let the manuscript fester for about a week before you proofread it.  It seems the errors float to the surface then. 

3: You must tell a story (I have read science fiction that is basically a travelogue of a future era but those are the rare exceptions).  No matter how wonderful your background and characters are, there must be a story.  Something interesting needs to happen.  Yes, I know this is basic, but some writers forget it.

4: You need a theme.  This is a sentence, a statement, that your story/novel makes.  It could be as simple as "good can triumph over evil" or more complicated.  But if your writing doesn't say something, why bother?  However, refer to #3: the story is the important thing.

5: Your protagonist must go through the story and come out changed in the end, usually for the better.  The experience must have some profound effect on your protagonist.

6: Your characters must be three-dimensional.  They cannot be cookie cutter characters or caricatures (unless you're doing satire, then that might work).  This includes your villain.  Here's an exercise: what do your villain's friends like about him?  He doesn't have friends, only minions?  Then he's not a complete three dimensional character.

8: The basic plot is this (and don't dismiss this, it's been the basis for a lot of successful literature): Protagonist has a goal.  Between him and the goal is an obstacle.  He tries different means to over come the obstacle.  In the end, using something he'd never considered before, he does (usually on the third try).  And then he continues on his way a better man because of it.

9: The obstacle in #8can be anything from a high wall to some character flaw in the protagonist.  There is probably no limit to what the obstacle can be (or us writers would have been out of a job a long time ago).  Layers are good.  For instance, look at Lord of the Rings.  The goal is to drop the ring in the fires of Mt. Doom.  The obstacle is all of Mordor is surrounding Mt. Doom.  But also obstacles are the lust others (and eventually Frodo) have for the ring and Smeagol trying to drive a wedge between Sam and Frodo.

10: Avoid cliches like the plague.  One of the hardest things (for me) as a writer is to describe mundane things in novel ways.  Be brutal with your writing.  Do not allow yourself to be mundane.  For example, say "Avoid cliches as if they were a rabid yappy lap dog."  Or "Avoid cliches like that aunt with the whiskers who always wants to give you a big hug and kiss."  That should give you the idea. 

So, there you go.  This is probably the last writing lesson post (unless I think of more things to write about).  I hope they have been useful for you. 

Writing Lessons: Lesson Four, Dialogue

This is our fourth lesson in writing (See here, here, and here for the first three).

Today's lesson is: dialogue.  Dying is easy; dialogue is hard.  First let's handle the basics: punctuation.

A sentence of dialogue should look like this:

"Hello," Joe said.

The comma is inside the quote marks.  If Joe asks a question or yells (i.e., you want to use an exclamation point) they, too go inside the quotation marks:

"Hello?" Joe asked.

"Hello!" Joe yelled.

Notice it is NOT: "Hello," Joe asked? because your sentence is a statement (unless your statement is a question:"'Hello?' Joe asked?" Fred queried but now we're getting into complications that are too numerous to cover here).

That's the basics.  If you really want to explore the punctuation of quotations (and if you want to write, you should), see this page.

Now, read the following exchange of dialogue (note that each new speaker starts a new paragraph):

"Hello," Joe said.

"Hi," Fred said.

"Do you know what happened to the knuter valve?" Joe asked.

"I have no idea," Fred said.

"That's strange," Joe said.

"Yes, it is," Fred said.

In our discussion Tuesday about word repetition, we learned not to repeat words.  Even (perhaps especially) the word "said."  So how do you avoid the word "said"?  Here's some tricks:

1) Just leave it out.  Once you've established who's talking you don't have to say who it is in every line:

"Hello," Joe said.

"Hi," Fred said.

"Do you know what happened to the knuter valve?" Joe asked.

"I have no idea."

 "That's strange."

 "Yes, it is," Fred said.

Be very careful if it's a three-way conversation, you might have to still identify who says each line.

2) use other words ("asked" "replied" "commented" "breathed" "whispered").  Here's a website that lists hundreds of words you can use other than "said" (go on to the following pages).

"Hello," Joe said.

"Hi," Fred replied.

"Do you know what happened to the knuter valve?" Joe asked.

"I have no idea," Fred answered.

"That's strange," Joe commented.

"Yes, it is," Fred lamented.

But this is pretty dry and stale conversation.  So we need to put in some modifiers to make the feelings of the characters more obvious to the reader:

"Hello," Joe said anxiously.

"Hi," Fred replied wearily.

"Do you know what happened to the knuter valve?" Joe demanded.

"I have no idea," Fred said with a yawn.

"That's strange," Joe growled angrily.

"Yes, it is," Fred lamented.

3) Another trick to avoid the construction of "Quote," he said is to use actions by the speakers to identify who's speaking:

"Hello," Joe said anxiously.

"Hi," Fred replied wearily.

Joe walked up to Fred.  "Do you know what happened to the knuter valve?"

"I have no idea," Fred said with a yawn and went back to reading his comic book.

Joe growled angrily.  "That's strange."

Fred shrugged.  "Yes, it is."

Note also that now we know that Joe is rather anxious about the knuter valve while Fred just doesn't seem to care.

When writing long dialoge scenes, you're going to want to use all three tricks.  And there's nothing wrong with "said" just don't over use it (it is my opinion that reader's eyes tend to skip lightly over "said").

(Someone once told me that "Hello," Joe laughed is incorrect because laughing is not speaking and it should be "Hello." Joe laughed.  I don't agree with that but take it as you wish.)

So much for the mechanics of dialogue.  Now for the hard part: making each character have a unique voice.  To be honest, this isn't one of my strengths.  But you have to hear each character's voice in your head.  This is why while writing is a lonely, solitary occupation, the writer needs to talk to (and listen to) a lot of people to hear how people speak.  Avoid accents and dialects to set off the way people speak:  A) It's lazy and B) it's hard to read.

You need to know your characters well enough to know how they would talk.  What influences their dialogue: education, intelligence, occupation, region of the country they grew up in, even things such as their political views and their religion.  Some folks are lazy speakers.  Some like to show off their vocabulary.  These are things you need to know about your characters.  You need to be far enough inside your character's heads to know how they talk.  Good luck with that.  As I said, that is a weak point in my writing.

Tomorrow, some rules of writing, which may be our last entry.

Writing Lessons: Lesson Three, Show and Tell

This part three of a continuing series of writing lessons.  Parts one and two were earlier this week.

They always tell beginning writers to "show, not tell."  I'm slower than most and it took me a long time to figure out what that meant.  At the risk of sounding stupid, it means: show your reader things don't tell them things.

For example, read the following passage.

A man walked into the bar.  He was tall and slim with broad shoulders, dark wavy hair and intelligent blue eyes.  He was dressed well in a business suit and a red power tie. 

Okay, that's not too bad.  You should have a picture of this man in your head.  But compare and contrast that to the following:

The man strode on long legs into the bar.  His quick blue eyes surveyed the scene as he looked for his friend.  He carried his tall frame confidently toward the bartender, adjusting his red power tie and pulling on the single cuffs of his starched dress shirt.  His shoulders filled out his dark suit which complimented his dark wavy hair.

See the difference?  This accomplishes two things: one, the story doesn't come to a dead stop to describe the man.  The narration can continue (he walked to the bartender, he looked for his friend) while you are describing him.  (If I were writing a longer passage I would leak out these details more slowly than I did here).  And two, you can add more detail without getting boring (e.g., single cuff, starched shirt, confidently). 

Here's an excerpt form a novel I haven't finished:

"What are you doing home," Marilyn asked Mike as she came in, her backpack over her shoulder making her shirt ride up more, exposing more of her bare, flat tummy over her low rise jeans.

"How was school?" Mike asked from the couch where he was watching the apartment's T.V.

Marilyn fixed him with her green eyes, her long dirty blonde hair hanging down her back to almost the end of her shirt.  "Don't change the subject, mister."
Mike turned off the T.V. with the remote and looked at her.  "I got fired."

"What?" . . .  She sat at the end of the couch and curled one long leg underneath her. 

Okay, what have we learned about Marilyn while the story was proceeding: she's probably a student (who else carries a backpack?), she's tall (long leg), thin (flat tummy), with green eyes and long dirty blond hair.  And we didn't have to read a paragragh of description to learn it and didn't stop the narrative dead cold with that paragraph.

"Show, don't tell" works with things other than descriptions of people.  For example, you can tell your reader "Joe died" or you can show your reader: "Joe slowly crumpled to the ground, a questioning look on his visage with his eyes going dark as he dies."

Like I said Monday: paint a picture with words.  Show, don't tell.

Tomorrow: Dialogue

Writing Lessons: Lesson Two, Word Repetition

Yesterday we talked about using power words and phrases and adding adverbs and adjectives to paint a picture and/or to punch up your writing .

Today we're going to talk about a common mistake beginning writers often make: word repetition.  Read the following not very interesting passage that I just made up:

Tom got on his horse and rode the horse out of the town toward the sunset.  The horse was a strong horse and would take Tom to his next adventure in the next town where his horse would remain his faithful horse.

At this point you should be throwing things at the computer screen that passage is so poorly written.  So what's wrong with it (other than it's just dumb)?  Well, the word "horse" appears six times in forty-two words.  That's 14.2% of the words are "horse."  (Admittedly, I wrote that passage trying to put in references to the horse as often as I could.)

What you want to avoid is "word repitition" in your writing.  And that's where having a good vocabulary comes in.  So let's rewrite that passage and see if we can avoid word repetition as much as possible:

Tom got on his horse and rode the animal out of the town toward the sunset.  The horse was a strong beast and would take Tom to his next adventure in the next settlement where his pinto would remain his faithful steed.

Okay, we're down to two uses of "horse" and, in my opinion, both of them are needed.  The first one, you could say "Tom got on his pinto/steed/equine" (as long as the word referred to "horse") but I believe start from the simple "horse" and move to the more complex "steed".   But try to never have the same noun in one sentence.  (You could say "Tom got on his animal" if you were writing science fiction or fantasy and the animal was something other than a horse and you were stringing your reader along before revealing that Tom was indeed riding a thoat.)

Also, the second use of "horse" is the second sentence could be changed, perhaps to "mount" giving us only one use of the word "horse."

And, notice that "pinto" gives us more information about the horse.  Avoiding word repetition is a good chance to supply your reader with more detail.  And of course once you call it a "pinto" you can't later call it a "mustang."

One of the hardest scenes to write was in my novel (unpublished) Rock Killer where there was a shoot-out between the heroin and the bad guys at the same time a house was burning.  So I had the burning fire and guns firing.  It was a challenge.  I loved writing that scene.

Use your thesaurus (the one that comes with Word is fairly good) and your vocabulary to avoid word repetition.