Advice from a Novice

I'm six or seven books into my educational tour of crime fiction. I'm learning a lot. It's still the best homework ever.

Here's a list of some of the notes I've taken so far on what works and what doesn't in the books I've read. This is completely subjective. And as the title points out, it's a list of how-tos from somebody that hasn't. But I heard those monkeys were getting closer to re-creating Hamlet. If they can do that, I can give whatever advice I want!

1. Cut the pronouns. Lee Child is a master of this. You don't read about Reacher, "He found the door ajar. He pushed it open cautiously. He looked around." That's clumsy. Instead you read "He found the door ajar. Pushed it open cautiously. Looked around." Short, declarative sentences win the day.
2. Have a ticking clock. Yes, it was cheesy on 24. And yes, I'm speaking figuratively. The story has to have an impetus to move the characters to immediate action. Nobody wants to read about detective Will Solveitsomeday when they can read about captain Urgent Matters.
3. Decide on one familiar name per character. And stick with it. Nothing is worse that having the author switch between a character's first name, last name, pet name, nick name, rank, etc. Book characters don't have faces. We count on names for recognition. Don't confuse the reader.
4. Don't use dialogue as a plot mover. If the words coming from your character's mouth feel like you've extracted them to move along the story, revise. Readers notice.
5. Don't be afraid to cut. Be ruthless with your own work. I've just decided to chop off a 5,000+ word chapter. It doesn't advance the story, I don't come back to the characters. I can find a more effective use for that space (I think)
6. Don't be heavy handed with your opinion. If your character thinks his boss is a bafoon, you would do better to have the boss act as such and let the reader surmise than have the character state it. This also goes back to showing vs. telling.

The best advice of course is to do what I'm doing; read. Find what you do and don't like and work your manuscript accordingly.

Best of luck. I need it.

Oh, good luck to you too!

The Thigh Bone's Connected to the...Popcorn?

I don't usually watch commercials. The DVR has mercifully removed them from my tv routine. But every now and then if the tv is on in the background and my thumb is not glued to the fast forward button a few of the weasels manage to slip in. Which is ok. Because my backup is a well developed shield of indifference. I could care less what's being hawked. So the only time I take notice is when the volume goes inexplicably loud (thank you, congress, for fixing this) or something comes on that is so mind numbingly stupid I have to pay attention.

This is the story of a stupid commercial.

It starts with a man staring perplexed at a deep fried globe between his thumb and forefinger. The voice-over comes in with, "What part of the chicken is nugget?".

I'm with them here. Have you seen the mechanically separated slop that is a chucked nugget before the forming and frying? No? Then today is your special day:

It sort of looks like the end result of an elephant given a few gallons of Pepto Bismol to no avail.

We have forsworn chicken nuggets in our house. I prefer my meat product to possess the vague physical form of an animal. Now we eat Morning Star Chick'n Nuggets. Did you catch the replacement of the "I" with the apostrophe? That means they're soy. And actually very tasty. But I digress.

Next comes the assertion that, "We're KFC. Our cooks don't make nuggets, they make popcorn chicken!"

Excuse me? Exactly what part of the chicken is the POPCORN? I'm not writing this as a detached reflection. I'm recounting my immediate reaction. This is what I yelled--screamed--at my tv. How many stupid people did that line have to pass through on its way to my living room?

The commercial goes on to detail that popcorn chicken is in fact small pieces of the most premium breast meat (or the scraps left over from the larger pieces of their maltreated poultry, you decide which is more likely). But I'm no longer listening. I'm still trying to figure out just what part of a chicken is the popcorn.

I still have no idea.

You can watch the commercial here

A Witness Above

I've been neglectful in my posting. Almost as though I'm trying to read a large number of books in a short period of time while managing a job, a family, and my own manuscript revisions (ok--thoughts of revisions).

Since my last post I've read Janet Evanovich's first Stephanie Plum novel, One for the Money. If you're a fan of Robert B. Parker and you haven't read Ms. Evanovich you're missing out. It's almost like reading a female Spenser. In a word, hilarious.

Much like my previous post I feel the frontrunner doesn't need my compliments overflowing their plate. So let me focus on a novel I just completed by a writer with a bright future.

A Witness Above is Andy Straka's debut crime novel. It's almost a decade old, and he's written several more since. The protagonist is Frank Pavlicek, a discredited former NYPD detective living out his mundane life as a Private Investigator in a small West Virginia town, consoling himself from the deterioration of his family with his love for falconry.

The description of Pavlicek I've just given makes him sound damned depressing. He's not. Straka takes us quickly through the events leading him to where he is when the story begins, and fills us in on more of the backstory as we go along.

The plot itself involves a dead drug dealer discovered by Pavlicek, and his teenage daughter's implication in the crime. As the thread unravels there is deceit and uncertainty in droves. I had only fleeting suspicions of the ending before it came. This is much to Straka's credit. I don't expect to be kept in suspense of whodunnit, but of the resolution. When I get both I'm very pleased.

There were some moments where the dialogue felt pushed, like it was moving to serve the story and not true to the characters. But there were also some very entertaining exchanges, and by the end I was ready to read move about Frank Pavlicek.

I hope you all take a look. Mr. Straka deserves it.

Next up, The Kotov Syndrome by Russell Blake. It's free on iBooks and I'm in between trips to the library. Perfect combo.

After that I hope to get my hands on a copy of Antler Dust, by Mark Stevens. I swear I reserved a copy from the library, but now a search for the book and author comes back with nothing! Guess I'll try Amazon.

I'm still open to recommendations. Tweet me.

Book Reviews - The Killing Floor, Open Season

I'm fairly certain the Internet masses aren't clamoring for my review of a couple of books published more than a decade ago. But I've read them and I'm on the train without another to read. Maybe I should write a bit.
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For those of you that stuck around after my enthralling open, let's get to it.

I'm two books into my "20 books by Thanksgiving" odyssey. Judging by my current pace, it'll be more like a 10 book odyssey. I should probably stop referencing it as an odyssey and switch to calling it a three hour cruise.

First I read The Killing Floor by Lee Child. It was great. Jack Reacher is a great tough guy and I look forward to reading about him in the following installments. Mr. Child does not need my help to sell books, look up his rave reviews on Amazon.

Next was Open Season by C.J. Box.

This one was unique for a couple of reasons.

1) It was out of the scope of my usual reading material. The novel is set in the Wyoming Rockies. The protagonist is Joe Picket, a Fish and Game Warden. This is about as far away from Spenser's Boston as one can get. I'm not a hunter. I enjoyed my trip through Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, but I certainly didn't traipse through the countryside and become an outdoorsman. But Mr. Box did a good job painting a picture of the landscape.

2) The first half of the book honestly didn't engage me. I might even have put it down if I weren't reading to absorb the features of published work in order to shape up my own manuscript. The characters felt shallow and cookie-cutter. The plot felt soft and inconsequential. The writing itself didn't seem up to par. But halfway through the characters filled out and the plot picked up it's clip. I realized the issues with the first half of the book we easily explainable. The characters were new, they had to be introduced. And Mr. Box was writing a normal family. It's easily to grab attention with Jack Reacher, arrested in scene one. But Joe Pickett is a family man, and the author wanted to put that across. The plot felt slow because of a crazy thing called exposition.

I'm going to touch a bit more on the exposition. I know that my manuscript needs to have better pace for the first third or so. The exposition drags it down. But it's nice to see that Open Season spent almost half the book setting things up. It means I can add movement instead of stripping the exposition that needs to be there.

The most valuable lesson I learned so far? Cut the pronoun usage. It doesn't have to be "Sam raised his gun. He took aim. He fired in earnest," when " Sam raised his gun. Took aim. Fired in earnest," works just as well and reads better.

Don't forget, I'm taking suggestions. I'm even reading some books from Twitter followers Andy Straka and Mark Stevens.

Creative Inspiration

I don't know what it is specifically that makes others write. I think we'd all like to be rich and famous but if that's your main motivation you're likely to quit after realizing how hard the publishing industry is.

We writers obviously have a love for the printed word. We're usually readers first. But what drives us to put pen to paper (or to be more current--fingers to iPad) and create?

For me the answer is appreciation and inspiration. When I read/view/listen to some piece of artistic expression that really strikes me as wonderful it fills me from top to bottom with appreciation for the work, and inspiration to create something that will have a similar effect on another.

Yesterday I was listening to Adele and was amazed (as I always am) by the haunting quality of her voice. Her music feels to substantial, so meaningful, so much more than the rest of the current music scene. Yes, I'm a writer of novels, and it's completely apples to oranges, but hearing her creativity fueled m desire to contribute.

I get the same feeling each week watching the extraordinary writing on Parenthood. The characters are written so well that I feel like I'm watching a real family. It makes me want to write full characters and believable dialogue like that.

It's almost like a big artistic pay-it-forward system, where we all inspire enough to put forth our best and, in turn, inspire further.

Thank you, fellow writers, for inspiring me.

Schindler's List

I watched Schindler's list for the first time over the weekend (and into the week...and for what seemed like an eternity. Not the duration optimized for busy parents watching in the space between the kids bedtime and our inevitable decline into exhausted stupor). It was of course great. I'm probably the last person on the earth to have seen it, so I'm certainly not going to sing it's praises like they're new.

What stuck with me most coming out of the experience is the way it hasn't stuck with me. At least not the way a book would. Yes, the treatment by the Nazi's was horrible. Yes, the emaciated, frail bodies of the Polish Jews were sickening. Yes, the exploitation of slave labor and breaking apart of families was deplorable. And yet...

None of it stuck with me. A few days later I don't feel like I'm still carrying the weight of their burden. And here's why that's interesting; after reading about the same events I did.

The detail described in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was so thorough, so precise, and so vivid that it sickened me for days. The characters I connected to in Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance were so full of life and strength, and I watched them wither away in body and spirit over the course of a thousand pages. There were times while reading and after that I felt physically ill for them.

The point is that as great a job as Steven Spielberg did on that movie (not to mention Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and the rest of the cast, including the inexplicably thin extras) there is no way to capture the true depth and breath, both in scope and character, of that event in a movie. Even if it is three hours.

Books connect in ways that film cannot. Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words. But how about a couple hundred thousand? Long live the written word! Now...if we could just get more people to read.
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Note: the one area that the movie succeed in a way that a book couldn't was the final scene wherein a procession of descendants from the Jews that Oskar Schindler saved made their way to his tomb and paid their respects. Seeing the sheer number of people who are in the world today because of him was much more powerful than reading a number (6,000).

Final Note: Yes, I know I'm missing the most obvious book to movie comparison - the book Schindler's List. So shoot me, I haven't had time to read it.

An Education in Crime Fiction

My next endeavor can be viewed as bass-ackwards (since I've already written a book) or an exercise in honing my craft.

I'm taking the vaunted advice gathered during by submersion in the shark tank to heart and setting up a reading list. I plan on reading 20 crime novels by Thanksgiving. This whirlwind tour is intended to educate me on the finer points of plotting, pace, forward momentum, and dialogue employed by published writers.

Here's where you come in: I'm looking for suggestions on which books to choose. Specifically in the mystery/thriller genre. I would most closely associate my style with Robert B. Parker (and hope to someday be good enough to inspire that comparison out of others). I'm open to any similar books. When in doubt, suggest a title, I'll certainly consider it.

Please be specific, give me a name and title, not just "anything by X". And if you're a writer, feel free to tout your own work, I'd love to read it.

This is no contest, there's no incentive to comment to win anything. But if you're reading my blog you're likely a lover of good books. And who doesn't salivate at the mouth to recommend a good book?

Recommend Away!

Rejection Foiled!

I love writing. The stuff that comes afterwards--not so much. I don't mind revising, editing, tinkering, etc., because that makes my product (the writing) better. Sure, I'd love to be Isaac Asimov, who once said that he never wrote a second draft because he couldn't make it better than his first, but I don't think I'm blessed with that sort of talent (if you disagree and think I'm the best ever, please say so in the comments. Unless you're a family member. Thanks anyway, Mom!). What is not my first love is the hyper-competitive nature of getting your work out for other eyes to view.

It hit be hard this morning that the reason I'm able to withstand the constant rejection that is a precursor to eventual success (stay positive!) is that I have a place to go where I'll never be rejected.

Mrs. HeWrites (SheWrites? Oh Hell, let's just stick with Mrs.) is always there for me. She reads my pages. She catches my errors and makes suggestions. She researches tips and tricks of the industry. She's even been known to spend evening following certain Twitter users with my account while I'm lounging on the couch (not you of course, my favorite Twitter friend, if you've made the trek to this humble blog. You I sought out myself with great determination and slavishly read your every tweet and blog entry). She asks about my progress with hopefulness and interest, and--undaunted--encourages me when I give her an update that in no way validates either.

We spend so much time as writers getting ourselves 'out there' and promoting our brand (that word always makes me feel like I'm Tony the Tiger). We have to of course. Ask anybody with half a brain and they'll tell you that their support system is what makes them who they are. I don't want to wait to be asked. And God knows I don't want to wait for the dedication line in my published book. It's important right now that Mrs. knows just how important she is to my efforts. That she keeps me going when it's tough and there's nobody else I'd rather celebrate a win with.

I'm sure you, dear reader (yes, I just did the literary equivalent of a direct gaze into the lens of the camera. It's my blog, I can break rules if I want), have a support system worth thanking. Do it today. Don't wait around for the publication. They should know now and know often how valuable they are.

Petunia

If The whole point of the blog is to develop a readership in advance of by big publishing break, the maybe I'd better post some writing for general consumption and comment.

(side note: the blog also serves the purpose of an outlet for my woes until aforementioned big break comes along)

I posted the query previously, so you have some idea of the plot and genre of my book. It's by no means a humor novel, though what I'm about to post is hopefully a funny little bit. What I've tried to do throughout is bring the humanity and humor present in everyday life (at least in mine, if yours is humorless then I'm sorry) to the pages. I see no reason that a detective out to solve a major crime can't go about his day with a bit of wit like the rest of us. Sam Oak is no scowling Jack Bauer, nor do I ever want him to be. Think more along the lines of Robert B. Parker's Spenser.

All that said here is a brief exchange (one of many in the book) between Sam Oak and Petunia, the gatekeeper to the DARPA headquarters building. Before anyone goes in, they have to register the purpose of their visit with Petunia. Since his first day Sam has been trying to win her over with his charm. So far he's not faring well:

As he approached the Visitor Control Center and the blank stare of Petunia the gatekeeper he had a thought. Ghostbusters. Maybe, just maybe, Petunia had a sense of humor and had once watched the supernatural comedy. And hopefully its sequel.

As he approached the desk he removed his gun and holster from his hip. Popped open the cylinder, emptied it, clicked it shut and pushed it to his right, where he knew his friend the security guard would now be waiting to bag and tag it for his pick-up upon leaving.

"Petunia, my dear," Sam started. He was not surprised that the endearment had no visible effect. But he was ever confident that she was melting inside her candy coated shell. "Did you ever realize you're the keeper of the gate? Or-" Sam switched into his best Rick Moranis imitation, and stared in a trancelike state, "the Gatekeeper."

Petunia looked at him with the same blank stare she'd given him every day since his arrival. He couldn't tell if she didn't know what he was talking about or didn't think it was funny. He was getting a fairly strong sense that she didn't care.

"Have a blessed day, Petunia." Said Sam. He lingered just a moment to see if perhaps the religious farewell struck a chord. He was reaching for anything at this point. Blank Stare, followed by the standard instructions for property retrieval upon exit from the building. It was a little creepy that she'd said the instructions in the exact same words each day. It was a lot creepy that she'd used the same inflection. It could've been a recording. For all Sam knew, it was. Maybe Petunia was simply an animatronic receptionist purchased and refurbished from Disneyland after the decommissioning of the Country Bear Jamboree attraction. It would explain the heft.

The security guard whispered softly as Sam walked by, "Stay strong, Stay-puff."

No luck for Sam this go around. Feel free to let me know what you think about the writing.

It's Always Sunny in Writersville

Agent websites, query how-to's, writer blogs, and all sorts of other online and print media share a common piece of advice: be resilient. Grow a thick skin. Let the rejections roll off like water from a duck. (I could continue. But then you'd probably stop reading.)

I took the advice to heart. I knew going in that it would be a long haul. And yet my heart still thumped when the first query went out with the woosh of my email app. And my morning outlook dimmed perceptively with the first rejection.

Here's the thing about even the best advice: it lodges itself in your head. I knew that my first query wouldn't snag me a deal. But I hoped it would. Can't override the hopes of the heart with the thoughts of the brain.

But that was query one, rejection one. I'm closer to thirty now, and chugging along. A funny thing happens to advice when it meets up with experience; it really takes hold. In my case, to an almost absurd level.

I've started making the most positive spins on my rejection letters. Here are a few examples:

From Janet Reid:
(Immediately following an email acknowledging my submission to query shark, which I didn't send)

**I think you got a reply about being in the QUERY SHARK pool, but that was my mistake.
I hit the wrong key. Sorry! :((

Followed by the rejection form letter. But did you see THAT? She added a personal note before the form letter. I think that qualifies as a personalized rejection. Sunny in Writersville.
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From Sara Crowe:

Thank you for thinking of me, but I am not a good fit for this. All my best, Sara

Could this have been typed directly to me? It's brevity lends it promise. There's no apology, no encouragement to try elsewhere because the rejection doesn't reflect the quality of my work. It's just a note. It's probably her standard reply, but even so I like it. Sunny in Writersville.
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And my personal favorite, received today and proof that I can turn ANYTHING into a positive:

From Dunham Literary, Inc.:

Dear Writer:

Thank you for your inquiry. We are sorry that we cannot invite you to submit your work or offer to represent you. Moreover, we apologize that we cannot respond in a more personal manner.

We wish you the best of luck elsewhere.

My name wasn't in that rejection form letter. But something better was. Did you see it? Look again. It's called validation. They called me a writer!

It's always sunny in Wrtitersville.

(Think I'm losing it? Let me know. Twitter or comment.)

Twitter

Less than a week after becoming 'blogger extraordinaire' I'm now on Twitter. The only platform left to conquer seems to be Facebook. Ok, with a handful of blog readers and a meager 7 followers on Twitter maybe I've still got some conquering to do on those platforms.

Isn't it funny that a few years ago I would've said "Facebook or Myspace?" Some how I don't think Justin Timberlake is going to bring that one back.

I watched a Dateline NBC episode last weekend (the program of last resort since the DVR has run dry at the bottom of the summer tv crapheap. It was Dateline or one of the thirteen Covert Affairs saved up, and I'm still not ready for the much camp). The topic was cyber bullying and the case was a mere 3-4 years old (the normal murder to trial timeline). Every time they mentioned the online spat between the two girls there was an ominous shot of a computer screen showing Myspace. I knew it was ominous because the shot was at a skewed angle. It was inadvertently comical. Each time it popped up my first reaction was, 'why are they using Myspace?'

I digress. I'm now on twitter @I_read_books. Follow me in the column to the right. You can also receive email updates. I must confess that I'm finding this social networking thing more complicated than a Millennial generation boy should. (Fun fact: I had to look up what generation I belong to. I thought it was gen. X, but apparently they're getting old and I'm not there yet). There is an endless stream of tweets, functions I'm not familiar with, and more apps to link me to the site that I can count. But using an app seems to be the best alternative to safari on my iPad, which freaks out and performs a disco page show--opening and closing new pages at random--when I try to use twitter. I'm using the official twitter app now, but I've seen tweet deck and others. If anybody has a suggestion I'm open.

This all leads me to my main point: Mr. or Ms. Perfect Literary Agent, if you are out there reading this and you have some spare time between query rejections and are looking for a manuscript to read and love, please come forward now. Spare me this all consuming process of integration into modern times. I read your comments on the addictiveness of twitter and the difficulty of unplugging. I know you don't really wish that pain on another. The only way to save me is to represent me now!

Not sold yet? Here's my query, if you want more let me know:

Sam Oak has has been tasked with succeeding where the FBI has failed. The mysterious theft of a high tech weapon from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has the FBI counterterrorism division on high alert. When a news making attack is carried out in Manhattan and the FBI is unable to make headway in the case they're forced to hire Sam as a consultant.

Sam is an Ex-Marine with a Private Investigator's license, a quick wit, and an issue with authority. His reputation for digging just a bit deeper than his peers has snared him the consulting gig, whether he likes the bureaucracy or not. Sam arrives at DARPA headquarters and quickly finds that the FBI has left him no leads or suspects to work with and a rookie agent as his liaison.

Sam pokes at the case until he strikes a nerve, manifested in an attempt at his life. When he finally does unravel the case he finds the motive for the crime morally ambiguous and is forced to weigh his duty to justice against his compassion for a sick child in need of treatment.

The case has taken Sam away from his native San Francisco and placed him three thousand miles away in Arlington, VA--far away from his childhood love. Ellie Porter is ten years removed from her relationship with Sam and a year past leaving her abusive husband. When her soon-to-be Ex starts an escalating pattern of harassment just weeks before the divorce is final Sam wishes nothing more than to be close enough to protect her.

Mind Games is a story of suspense and mystery, love and greed, and the secrets that can be revealed with a little bit of extra digging.

Page 99 Test

I've got at least fifteen page views now. One of them is confirmed as not having been me! Thank you, crabcakes.

A friend of mine recently turned me on to a great website called Page 99. Authors can upload their page 99 for review and commentary. It's set up to mimic flipping into a book at your local bookstore and appraising whether the page catches your interest.

10/18/11 update: my page 99 has been removed for manuscript updates. Look for a fresh sample by the end of the year.

Blogging - The Final Frontier (aside from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and any number of more current social media)

Blog
Noun
A website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the author
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So the conversation I had with myself went something like this:

Skeptical Everyday Me:
Why do you think anybody wants to know your innermost reflections? You lambast the social media platform for encouraging uninteresting people to share their thoughts with the world, deluding them into thinking it cares.

HeWrites (Desperately Hoping to Succeed Author Me):
You're right. You're right. I concede your point from the start. But I'm a struggling writer. Everything I read says build a following.

Everyday Me:
If you're a struggling writer you might want to focus on the writing part before you find a following.

HeWrites:
Maybe I used the wrong term. I'm not struggling to write. I've written an entire novel.

Everyday Me:
Really?

HeWrites:
Yeah. So maybe I should used the term struggling author.

Everyday Me:
A novel. Wow. Have you published it?

HeWrites:
And there's the rub. In my naïveté I thought that writing the book would be the hard part. In fact it was. But finding an agent to take it on is harder.

Everyday Me:
What's this agent talk about? Are you looking for an insurance policy? Find a publisher.

HeWrites:
They won't talk to me without a literary agent.

Everyday Me:
Then find an agent.

HeWrites:
They won't talk to me without a publishing record.

Everyday Me:
That sounds a bit circular.

HeWrites:
Like a hamster on a wheel. Each of the 600 or so reputable literary agents in the country receive thousands of queries a year. Because of the wonders of email these queries are now easier than ever for an author to submit and correspondingly easier for an agent to reject (hit the delete button and it's gone into cyberspace forever).

Everyday Me:
What's a query?

HeWrites:
A 500-600 word teaser to get the attention of the agent and make them want to read more. It's often followed by a 500-600 word synopsis--the literary equivalent of cruel and unusual punishment wherein you get to take your 94,000 page manuscript and condense it down to a few paragraphs.

Everyday Me:
If that could've been done wouldn't you have written a short story?

HeWrites:
You'd think.

Everyday Me:
What about a good old face-to-face? Knock on some doors. Go the extra mile. How will they know what a charming, intelligent, dare I say, handsome--

HeWrites:
--Thank you--

Everyday Me:
--Man you are if you don't put yourself front and center?

HeWrites:
Face time is a great idea. But half of the literary agents are in New York. That's a long walk or an expensive flight. Plus they don't want to be overrun by authors showing up at their offices. They'd see me staring in the entrance window, sweaty hands cupped to my eyes and pressed against the tinted glass to see inside, nervous ragged breath fogging up said glass, and call the cops to drag me away.

Everyday Me:
Don't they ever come out to mingle with the unwashed masses?

HeWrites:
Sure--at writer conventions. But unless you've got more vacation days and spare change lying around than I think (and I know you don't, since you're me, after all) that won't do you much good either. They are usually three day events, starting at a couple hundred bucks for registration alone. Add lodging on top of that.

Everyday Me:
I checked my pockets and I don't carry that much on me.

HeWrites:
I know.

Everyday Me:
So where does that leave us?

HeWrites:
Writing a blog. Maybe with the aforementioned charm, intelligence, and humor--

Everyday Me:
--Nobody mentioned humor.

HeWrites:
You know our philosophy; if one person laughs at a joke it's funny enough. And that's not exclusive to one other person.

As I was saying--it leaves us writing a blog, gathering followers, and askng those followers to read, comment on, and mold our work as they see fit. And if any of them happen to be authors ready to recommend the work, or agents filling the wee hours of their mornings trolling about erstwhile authors' blogs in search of hidden treasure (or amusement), all the better.

Everyday Me:
Let's blog! But do it well. I'd like to transition fully into you.

HeWrites:
Wouldn't all mere mortal-unpublished writers.
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So there you have it. I'm a blogger. I'll post updates on my efforts, snippets of my work, and (since I now have the platform anyway) maybe some opinions on current topics. Please feel free to email, post comments, and participate in any way you like. If my success comes it will be on your backs.

-Steve