Month: November 2014

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Novel Advances

A couple of hard-won pages moving our mentally unstable spy onto center stage in Silent as a Gun. A lot of free writing and thinking out loud. Necessary, but not resulting in actual page count. Which we know, guys, is all that counts.
Word Count: 475. Page Count: 2.

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Novel News

Latest spy book moves forward. Our heroine, the beautiful Emily, is told to go home from her CIA job and forget what she saw. Will she do that? Are you kidding?
Our thought for the day is an equation: EMOTION leads to MENTAL TENSION which brings on STRESS which brings characters to LIFE! Look for it in your book. Not there? stuff it in.
Word Count: 1501 Page Count: 6

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Gun News Workshop News

Back from a wonderful Pirate Workshop in Santa Barbara. Thanks to everyone for their willingness to write their butts off. Notes from the workshop to post on your bulletin board: “People read for emotion, not information.” It’s not what happens in your story, it’s what your characters feel about what happens.”
Good word count today on Silent as a Gun. The hero accepts the quest. A mysterious figure appears.
Word count: 1391. Page count: 5.

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Nights on the Point

My next novel, which I co-wrote under the pseudonym Roland Blair with old friend and former Davis resident, Ken White, will be released in December. Meanwhile, work continues on Silent as a Gun.

Nights on the Point is the story of three friends who light out for the territories because life is in the doing. Out on the road, Jack, Nikki, and Weston find power and magic they had never dreamed of. And gliding alongside unseen is the Bear – the first of their companions from the “other side.”
As the journey continues, the computer-generated world of the future collides with the timeless mythology of a land before language – interrupted periodically by whiskey, “reality burgers,” fist fights with crazed carnies, Zen trances, and country songs. The two sides of consciousness move closer and closer until, out of gas in the desert, our three travelers come face-to-face with their other-world counterparts.
The journey nearly ends forever in New Orleans with a poker game, an arrest for murder, and the disappearance of Nikki. Reunited on a stolen sailboat in Mobile Bay, the players embark on a final cruise down past Mile Zero to Key West.
And it’s happy ever after, right? Hot winds and heartbreaks, skinheads and shotguns write a different story as Jack and Weston face the inevitable end of their journey. But, is this really the end, or just the beginning of another journey?
Will the circle be unbroken? Bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye.