Modeling after the Successful...?

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


For January first, I need some kind of big new project, and a novel is big enough. There are lots of things floating around. I just have to pick a direction, and Alistair Maclean keeps popping into my head.

What would he write next? Bearing in mind what I have done before?

In order to become successful, a person might consider the technique of 'modeling' their behaviour after someone more successful than themselves.

In terms of writing this involves trying to figure out which authors you really loved as a kid, I suppose, or some book that really impressed you.

Almost any writer remembers wanting to be a cop or a private detective at some point in their life, or a military hero, or the heroine in a romantic historical fantasy; a witch, a champion horse-rider, or whatever.

The so-called 'child-adult' continues to pursue these notions well beyond reasonable extent, but that is where all art ultimately stems from.

When I was a kid I stayed home 'sick' from school, and lay in bed reading all of my mom's books.

That's one reason why it was so hard to determine what was 'adult' content in a book.

When I consider what I read at age ten, or age fourteen, then you realize that the ratings and warnings are for the peace of mind of the retailers and not much more.

I wanted to be like Hercule Poirot.

After reading 'The Young Lions,' I asked a question.

"Mommy! What's a 'wor'?"

"How is it spelled?" she asked.

"W-h-o-r-e," I replied.

Your kid's head won't explode if he gets a hold of the wrong book, but you might want to exercise some guidance.

As for me, I liked Alistair Maclean as a young man, and if I could write anything, I guess I want to be like him. Clint Eastwood, 'Where Eagles Dare,' (and Richard Burton,) and Harrison Ford, 'Force 10 from Navarone,' and plenty of other (Edward Fox, and was that Gregory Peck?) fine actors were in films made from his books, and you have to like that.

It might begin something like this:

It was the road of death, and it led straight to nowhere, but he loved it for all the right reasons.
Too many legends had died here, and a constellation of lesser lights. For the moment he was alone with their ghosts and the howl of the tires and the rumble and bark of the exhaust. Downshifting from fourth into third, Archie eased out the clutch and touched the brake, and she drifted through, clipping the apex of the right-hander at a clean seventy-five.
A lorry lumbered along up ahead, and there were vehicles in the oncoming lane. The Panzerotti Special squatted on the road like a panther, lithe and supple.
Archie put it in fifth gear and let the revs drop. The brakes seemed all right, but with two days to go, they had better pull something out of their sleeves…

New Things. Keeping It Screwed On Straight.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Okay, so tomorrow the Victorian Order of Nurses nurse will be here at ten o'clock. I need to be back with my smokes and coffee by then! The Evil Doctor Louis has never treated a bum-scuff on a 79 year-old man before, and we are grateful for their assistance.

I learned with a quick Google search that I have two books in Kobo Bookstore, good news indeed and just in time for the season. Those royalty checks will come from smashwords, as I recall, but I should check that out ASAP.

For some reason I'm not writing much right now, but clearly more stuff is in the works. Right now I'm researching places and platforms for reviews of my books, and some of these will include magazines listed on ralan.com and duotrope.com, etc.

With four e-books on Amazon in Kindle format, and four books on Smnashwords in multiple formats, and now the two books in Kobo Bookstore in multiple formats, things look promising for the new year.

In time I will have four books in Kobo, and hopefully get into Diesel, Applestore, you know the program.

I'm tweeting now. Several people participated in an experimental live chat with Brian Thomas Schmidt and Mike Resnick, sci-fi's record holder in terms of awards. Hopefully that will go better next time, Wednesday night at 9:00 here: #sffwrtcht (twitter.) We were either all on different pages or different app's.

As long as we can keep our heads screwed on straight, we should do all right. Other than that, it's time to learn marketing and social networking and all that jazz.

Excerpt. 'Core Values.'

The big cat sat on a branch, licking its chops, purring in contentment. Tasting the fresh blood of a rabbit from its paws and muzzle, she cleaned herself carefully. The smell of blood was a sure warning to other meals, still on the hoof or crouching cautiously in their burrows.

While she groomed her thick tawny fur, she was still always alert, always listening, smelling the wood-smoke and other flavours on the wind. She curled her right paw around and cleaned between each toe with her raspy, almost prehensile tongue. Then she did the other front paw, then each hind foot, with no hint of the precarious perch. Her balance and flexibility was a miracle of creation.

The killing was easy in these parts, and while the big cat was unaware of the fine geographic distinctions, she had unwittingly moved back into her natural range. She was home, and didn’t even know it. The killing was easy so the living was easy, and now the big cat had no natural enemies, no other top-of-the-food-chain predators competing directly with her; nor preying upon her. No other predators to spook a herd of white-tailed deer, fat and sassy after a long summer; no wolves spoiling the perfect set-up at the last instant, to cross ahead of the herd when the wind was wrong, or to leave a scent by a water source, and make them move on to another. She had the herd all to herself.

She was familiar with the black bears, who were a hereditary enemy, and sparks flew when they met. Yet she had not smelled any in so long she knew they were absent. She did not waste a lot of time contemplating this; she merely accepted it, and it was good.

While the barking of nervous dogs was often in the air, there were no wolves, and no sign of their past presence, no hint of a pack in the vicinity. No wolverines, no badgers, although their smaller cousins, and pretty good eating when happenstance allowed, such as the groundhog, the raccoon and the possum were in abundance. No moose, the only creature besides one other which truly frightened the big cat. There were plenty of the two-legged noisy ones. She felt a kind of caution and a kind of disdain for them, for they did not act properly, and seemed quite mad in their mindless pursuits; mysterious, and unknowable. She had never eaten one, not even been tempted. They smelled bad, looked odd, and since she had never tasted the meat, could not offer an opinion; and had never really developed a hankering to try it.

The deer that were her favourite meal were big, fat and plentiful, and showed signs of complacency, although lately they were more skittish. She knew nothing of hunting seasons, but they did and they knew, at least the adults, what time of year it was.

It was the time of the rut, when the sound of antlers rattling against other antlers would tell her where to go; tufts of hair on the trees to show where they had rubbed against, removing unwanted scruffy last-season fur; to make way for the glossy new coat.

The sweet-smelling tracks were by the water hole, where almost any morning, she could lie in wait and make a try for one. But now it was time to curl up and go to sleep, with her hindquarters rubbing reassuringly against the tree, head on paws, and tail curled around her like an expensive stole; on the upwind side to keep the chill away from her toes. A splishing and splashing came from the bowl of the valley nearby, where the creek curled around upon itself, and ran slow and deep. There was nothing in particular there that she liked to eat, and nothing in particular there that she feared. She put her head down and slept, mind you; with one ear open. One ear tracked the sound as it made its way down the flowing river. Finally, even that movement ceased, and after while, so did the purring. Her breath was soft, deep and even.

Pale frosty light glistened on the bark of oak branches around her perch, high above the blackened woods, all a-shiver with uncertain breezes, coming and going as is their wont.


END

This excerpt is from 'Core Values,' avaliable from Amazon and other fine retailers.

(Photo: Bas Lammers, Creative Commons Share-Attribute 2.0 Generic.)
 

The Pitiless Lens.

Learning the Ropes: Criticism and Feedback.

Morguefile, effects by Louis.



When I first began submitting short stories, I made one hundred eighty-five submissions before I got a hit, and that story still hasn’t come out yet.

Since May of 2009, I have made five hundred and ninety-seven submissions. Maybe half a dozen of those were book subs. Previously, I had made an estimated seventy-five book submissions, and a few others. Those were all by post. They also take a very, very long time. I used to submit to contests, which also takes a very long time, but you often do get the jury’s criticisms.

There is a difference in terms of feedback, and it is a vital one. The difference is time. A book rejection rarely if ever has any feedback or criticism attached to it. I know of one exception, and the gentleman edits two pages of your submission and sends them back to you along with your rejection slip. Mine had more red ink of his than the black ink I put there! It hurt like hell. A few hours later, I was re-writing happily enough, because, ‘now I knew what I had to do. ‘

Asimov’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s, or Ellery Queen’s will not send you criticism or a reason for your story rejection. They get tens of thousands of subs a year. To give even one person criticism is an unfair advantage in a competitive business. They don’t have time to do everyone, and how could you choose? Hard-luck stories? It is favouritism, especially at the lowest levels. How they treat top-profile authors is a whole ‘nuther story. (They ask for revisions.)

So the difference is time, and early in the career, criticism is absolutely vital. I never would have figured that out without actually trying different things. People who are further along the learning curve tend to forget what they struggled with twenty or thirty years ago. Maybe they made six submissions and started making money! Their experience is simply different. Mine is not exactly unique.

Some editors do give feedback, and criticism, and reasons for rejection. Rejection hurts? These guys are your best friends. ‘Learning the ropes,’ sounds like a nautical term. But it’s really a boxing term. In the early part of any career, you spend a fair amount of time on the ropes…it’s inevitable, and a part of the learning curve. You will see scars in the mirror, and you will have earned them.

The reason for rejection may be a simple one. Recently I subbed a story unthinkingly, and it was simply too long. The story itself may be fine. By checking the guidelines, I might have saved us both a little time.

My first submissions were combed out of a printed media guide at the local library, but getting on the internet has really freed me. This may seem nuts, but I did everything wrong—and I still got published. I sent original stories to foreign reprint markets, who mostly publish ‘known’ authors previously published in English, or writers in their own language.

Some of the inappropriate submissions I made were too long, or too short, reading period closed, improper format, failure to put my own name on things, no word count, or wrong genre. Every mistake in the book, and I still managed to get in. So far, the rate of acceptance is still running at about four percent, and most of those aren’t even professionally-paying markets. That is still twenty-five in a year and a half, with a few subs still out there. It proves ‘even a dummy like me can do it,’ and who hasn’t heard that one before?

There is plenty to learn. That’s for sure. But it’s just a matter of blood, tears, toil and sweat.

It is a matter of time. A short story has structure, and so does a novel. The criticisms come back to you a lot faster, sometimes three days as opposed to eight months or longer. And so you learn faster.

As far as writing novels goes, the more I do, the better I will get at it, and it is not that hard to see a big difference from the first to the fourth, fifth and sixth, which is where I began to get pretty comfortable with straightforward narrative fiction writing.

I can go back and look at stuff I submitted a year and a half ago, and sometimes I just shudder!

You can’t be afraid to take it on the chin once in a while, or you ain’t going anywhere.

Note: as of this re-post, (May 6/12, I'm up to 693 submissions.)

TOC: The Paranoid Cat and other tales.

The Paranoid Cat
The Acolyte
Thirty Years Gone
Sea of Tranquility
The New School
Wendigo
A Near Miss
Flash Video
The Jesus Christ Show
The Bottle Cap
Repelatron Raceway
Nanobots in the Lawn
Whale-Mart
Fortean Phenomena
The Comet
Bloody Dream