Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up." —Nancy Kress


Someone commented recently that researching the dark things must be terrible. She was right. It is terrible when you consider that research is based on reality.

Red Tide's research taught me about Human Remains Detection dogs and the difficult but magnificent job they do every day. In The Missings I learned about the vast number of people waiting for an organ transplant, and the fact that many of those people are removed from the list not because they received an organ, but because they died while waiting.

In The Sacrifice I learned more about Santeria than I ever wanted to know and I certainly would never want to embrace it in my private life. The book I'm working on now, tentatively titled Trafficked, deals with the horror of human trafficking. While Santeria is a choice, being trafficked is most certainly not—which makes the research that much more oppressive, frustrating, thought-provoking, and infuriating.

But here's where fiction comes in: I can make the bad guys pay. I can create a satisfactory outcome that sadly, reality just can't achieve on a regular basis. I can help a character find his or her personal strength. They don't always have to be the victim.

In fiction, I can share information that might help open others eyes as it did mine, without making readers feel completely depressed and unequipped.

And no animals are ever killed.



Just sayin'.



It's all better with friends.

Audiobook Contest/Promotion

This is so much fun!

If you or someone you know enjoys audiobooks, this is a contest you'll love!

The buses are Metro Buses in Nova Scotia, Canada, but the contest is open to a whole lot more people!



For more information, go to StoryFinds and check out the deets.

I need to share that I'm pretty stoked to see the cover of The Missings on a bus.


It's all better with friends.

Arson Dogs

I love doing research for my books.

For Red Tide, I learned about Human Remains Detection Dogs, sometimes referred to as Cadaver Dogs. I purchased a couple of reference books about training and techniques. 

I also learned about Karenia brevis, the name for saxitoxin, sometimes called harmful algal bloom (or HAB), but more commonly called red tide. Fascinating stuff.

With The Missings, I needed to know about organ donation: how it worked and why so many lives were at stake. It was a sad eye-opener.  I also needed to learn a little about undocumented people living in our country. Another sad eye-opener.

Learning more about police procedure was critical, and I will be forever grateful to the crime scene investigators and detectives who helped me make the details shine. And for the police chief of Aspen, Colorado, for helping me with a critical plot point.

In The Missings there's another possibility early in the book explaining deaths in the area, and I had to research cults. The little bit of information I obtained made me want to shut down. The normal presentation of some very dark material bothered me, and I was glad the story I was writing wouldn't be in that place very long. 

But because cults both fascinated and repelled me, I knew that The Sacrifice would have one front and center. I learned about Santeria. 

And I wanted to help bring depression out of the closet. To make depression both real and unashamed, my wonderful, strong, primary male character shows how he's living with it day in and day out without dwelling in it. To me, Mex Anderson and everyone who battles those demons, are heroes. I learned a lot.

And now, I'm writing Flame Game, with a wonderful new dog named Kaji, Japanese for fire.

Here's something I ran across this week. Check it out:

It's all better with friends.

THE MISSINGS Audiobook

The title of the post says it all!

I'm thrilled to announce that THE MISSINGS is available as an audiobook through iTunes, Amazon, and Audible.com.

Cool or what?

The narrator, Eric Nutting, is a talented voice-over actor who, during the production of the audibook was in incredibly high demand, including a role in Les Miserables! Listeners are in for a treat!

******DRUMROLL******

I have been provided a limited amount of coupon codes where listeners can recieve the audiobook for free from Audible.com, and have already given out seveeral to readers who have signed up for my infrequent newsletters via my website (hint, hint). If you're interested, and would consider writing a review, let me know your email address in the comments section and I'll get your personal coupon code to you.

It's all better with friends.

Reader Connection

First, I want to thank all of you for the tremendous reception you've shown for my new release. THE SACRIFICE scared me just a little because it was different from either of my earlier two books. Thank you for the warm reception.

To celebrate it going live, I put RED TIDE up for free for three days (ending Thursday, 10/24) and THE MISSINGS at a bargain price of only $1.99 which will end Friday.

And here's this odd little thing I'm working through… when I look at the numbers, the first thing that hits me is their scope. Through Amazon, my books are being read around the world. And then there's this: readers who I may never meet will read my words, and I will in some way be connected to them. Whether they like my books or not (and oh, I want them to like my books), I have connected to someone living in another country, another state, even down the street. It's a one-on-one, almost intimate connection. That's a little freaky.

It's a wonderful thing to work through.

And it's all good with friends.

I'm Late! I'm Late! For a Very Important Date!

The process of bringing out a new book can be painful.

The ebook version of THE MISSINGS has been doing very well since it's release October 15th. For those of you who have bought it and reviewed it, you have my humble thanks.

I really thought I'd have the paperback available within a week of that release.

Not.

This morning I ordered my second proof to make sure the cover works. The first one was far too dark and rather than red as an accent color, it was orange. Blick. It took several attempts on the part of my cover designer to come up with an alternative that looked good. If, and it's a big if, this cover is what I want, then paperback version will be out a full month later than I thought.

I don't know how other writer's paperback sales compare to their ebook sales, but for me it usually runs about 100:1. For every hundred downloads of a book, I'll sell one paperback. So, is it worth it? You bet.

It's important to me to have my books available in as many formats as reasonably possible. In our family, we read ebooks and paper books and we listen to audio books. Both RED TIDE and THE MISSINGS are currently posted with an audio production company for narration.

In some households, ebooks are not an option; and in still others, audio books are the only way people can "read" a good story. So I'll keep trying.

Are different formats important to you? Do you have a preference?


It's all better with friends.