Tag: best selling authors

Dean Koontz’s newest novel, Ashley Bell * A Review

Koontz.new book.._AA160_‘Ashley Bell‘ by Dean Koontz **   A Review reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing

Every time I begin a new Dean Koontz novel (and I’ve read them all!) a few chapters in I say to myself, ‘this is the best one ever’. And it is. Just a few pages into this story, imagine my delight when a golden retriever, Olaf, appears in Bibi’s life.  Why? you might ask?

Dean Koontz and I have had a ‘doggy’ friendship for close to 20 years.  Over those years, he and I have coincidentally adopted rescue/service Golden Retrievers.

Dean Koontz and Trixie
Dean and his beloved Trixie

I’m on my fourth. Dean’s latest is lovely Anna. (for more about this read my interview with Dean).

Gus.Rocky.byebye
Gus & Rocky

I challenge any reader to not be totally enchanted by the third…no…the first chapter of Ashley Bell.  Dean writes what I call poetry-fiction…prose. Writing about a foggy coastal night:  “…those fumes were only slithers of mist seeping through the screen that covered the attic vents. As though the ocean of fog outside possessed curiosity about the contents of the houses currently submerged in it…” The imagery he creates makes me weep, as a writer. The characters draw you in and leave you rooting for them, hoping nothing bad happens, wanting a happy ending for someone besides yourself. Continue reading “Dean Koontz’s newest novel, Ashley Bell * A Review”

Authors, Where Do You Find Your Characters?

Over and over again, I preach the concept:  ‘let it flow’, ‘let your characters take you on a journey’, ‘If it’s going well, I will happily be just the typist’.

I recently interviewed Dean Koontz and here’s what he said on the subject:

Photographer: Thomas Engstrom

“And then I start. In the first few chapters, the lead characters are forming, and I am learning who they are. I’ve often said that if I give characters free will, if I don’t plot out the story and instead present them with a problem and watch them deal with it, they begin to take on a life of their own, frequently surprising me with the choices they make. This is mysterious and exciting. When it’s going well, it’s simultaneously an intense intellectual endeavor and an almost dream-state journey of wonder and emotion.”

Author, Matt Jorgenson recently said when asked: Where do you first discover your characters?
“Initially I don’t think of them as characters. It’s kind of like arranging furniture. I need OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAsomething tall here, wide there, elegant there. I often just plop them in for the energy they lend to the development of the story. When I’m unable to sit at my laptop and write I will often sketch out backstories for some of the characters with pen and paper based on what seems reasonable according to how they act/function in the story and then weave those details back in later.”
Continue reading “Authors, Where Do You Find Your Characters?”

More with best selling author, Julia London (part 3)

Julia in Ireland
Julia in Ireland

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

(con’t. from Part 2)  JL.  From there, the manuscript is improved over and over again with subsequent rounds of editing by me, by an editor’s notes, by copy editors who catch inconsistencies that, unbelievably, neither me or a developmental editor caught. So the finished book has been massaged and manipulated many times over. At least in my experience.

Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing/stories?

JL. Just living life informs the writing. I meant what I said about having to be in the world to understand it. It would be very easy to never leave my house, to sit in front of a computer all day. But I won’t allow myself to do that. I have an active lifestyle, I travel, I have an extended family I love and that has been dysfunctional from time to time. Continue reading “More with best selling author, Julia London (part 3)”

Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances

Julia.London.203,200_I confess!  I read them along with several million other women.  I love the regency period when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, in the drawing room.   Subtle, and full of innuendo, I like something left to my own imagination. And Julia London delivers!  Now I landed an interview with one of my favorites.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo/s of your shed, room, closet, barn….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

JL. This is my current office, however I’ve just invested in a treadmill desk and am about to change the London.3way I spend my day, as in upright and not hunched over. But where is that sucker going to go? I haven’t figured that out yet.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

JL. I can’t sit down and write until I’ve exercised in some way. I have a variety of activities to start the day: either taking my dog out for a jog (rather, he trots happily along, while I wheeze through a jog), yoga, biking or Pilates. It clears my head and gets the creative juices flowing. I’ve worked out a lot of plots while sweating profusely.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

JL. I majored in political science with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Studies. Mainly because I paid my own way through college with a patchwork of jobs and scholarships. The best was a National Defense Education Act scholarship for which all I had to do was study a critical language for three years. The deal was that if the country needed your language skills within some specified time frame after graduation, they could call on you. So I studied Arabic (I know, right?) and took some classes in Middle Eastern religion, economics, and culture. I should point out that I have forgotten most of it. As it turned out, there wasn’t a big call for that expertise. Continue reading “Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances”

Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)

a.comicbookstore.BBTWhen I achieved doing this interview, I won’t lie.  I wanted to run into Stuart’s comic book store and yell, ‘I’m interviewing Chuck Dixon!’ For those of you who have no idea who Stuart is…well you are not living to your full capacity if you’re not watching, The Big Bang Theory’.
Chuck was so generous with his answers so let’s sit back and enjoy the final part.
Q. What makes a writer great?

CD. If a writer’s work can survive a few generations past his initial readership. History is filled with writers who were considered white hot in their era and forgotten only a few years past their death and never re-discovered.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

CD. Everyone works differently. No writer’s approach is the same as another….. Continue reading “Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)”

More With Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Icon (part 2)

a.Dixon.comic.book-dixonDixon:  ‘I’m strictly a writer. I write the scripts that the artist works from. It’s a format much like a screenplay, broken down panel-by-panel with descriptions of what should appear in each panel. And all the dialogue and captions in place. I wrote quite a few Simpsons comic book stories over a ten year period.’

Q. Was that a challenge to switch to a novel format and ‘point-of-view’?

CD. Mostly it was the intimidation factor. In comics, my chosen medium, the bench for writing talent is pretty thin. But in prose fiction I’m up against thousands of years of awesome writing. I mean, who the hell do I think I am going to work in the same shop as Alexander Dumas or Jane Austen?

And now I have to actually write descriptive text that evokes images in the minds of casual readers. In comics my descriptions are utilitarian. I simply tell the artist what needs to be in the panel. It’s not artful in any way. In prose fiction I need to be more subtle; more circumspect. More of a wordsmith which is something I have never considered myself to be. But pacing, plotting, characterization and all the rest are the same for comics as they are for prose. Continue reading “More With Chuck Dixon, Comic Book Icon (part 2)”

A Day In The Life Of A Writer

anxnst.mouseIt’s time once again to share with other writers, my hopes, my fears, my successes, my setbacks. My days as a writer look very much like a pizza loaded with toppings.

My time at my keyboard, has been filled feverishly working with an editor on The Art of Murder because a publisher is sniffing around my campfire.  That is to say, the senior editor for a publishing co. said my mystery series had ‘tremendous potential‘ but wasn’t quite there yet.  Now we wait and see if my editor and I were able to do what they needed in order to offer me a contract.

Yes, even though I am moderately successful as an indie author, I am still chasing a traditional publisher when I stumble across one.  Continue reading “A Day In The Life Of A Writer”

Successor to Tom Clancy, an Interview with Grant Blackwood (part 2)

Part Two of my Interview with best selling author, Grant Blackwood, successor to Tom Clancy

blackwood-portrait-253x300Q. Who or what is your “Muse” at the moment ?

A. I don’t have a muse, per se. If anything, my muse is the drive to write stories that entertain readers. That’s the little voice that sits on my shoulder. Too often writers fall into the muse trap — believing that they’re creativity and productivity is at the whim of something “out there”, something fleeting. Start writing. The muse will be there.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

A. July of 1987, two months after I got out of the Navy. I’d been thinking about writing a book since I was eight or nine. That morning in July I caught myself on a good day. Instead of saying, “maybe tomorrow”, Continue reading “Successor to Tom Clancy, an Interview with Grant Blackwood (part 2)”

Entry Island by Peter May ** A Review

reviews, authors, writing  reviews, authors, writing 5 out of 5 quills  A Reviewreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing         Peter May has done it again and we should hold a parade because Entry Island is being released in the USA September 15th.
A bustling murder mystery to be sure…but as Sime Mackenzie is called to the crime scene he experiences an almost debilitating deja’ vu.

Detective Mackenzie is haunted by the certainty that he knows the widow of the murdered man, Entry Island by Peter Mayeven though rationally he knows he’s never seen her before, in this lifetime. His dreams are filled with a time long ago when he, as a young man, witnessed and then fled the ‘clearances’ in the Highlands of  far off Scotland.

Being a historian buff at heart, I adore any story that tells me a tale about a time that I was not so aware of…. Continue reading “Entry Island by Peter May ** A Review”

REVIEW…Ransom Canyon by Jodi Thomas

reviews, authors, writing reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing5 out of 5 quills  reviews, authors, writingreviews, authors, writing   A Review  ** Ransom Canyon by Jodi Thomas

Jodi.book.coverCrossroads, Texas.  A 4-way intersection with one signal light.  Turn south to Abilene, north to Amarillo…you get the idea. Just a stop in the road to where you need to go.  As you sit at the light do you ever wonder about the people that populate this little one-horse-town?  Of course you don’t…your thoughts are about how big this state is and ‘will I ever get out of Texas?’ Come on, you know we’ve all thought it!

Thomas tells you all about the folks in the little village of Crossroads in a new series entitled Ransom Canyon Romance. And it’s great reading.  In my mind it’s not just about Staten and Quinn, two star-crossed lovers.  There were several main characters that stole this reader’s heart.  Yancy, a new parolee, Grandma Kirkland, and Lucas.  But that’s all I’m going to say as this reviewer does not write spoilers and give you the whole story, chapter and verse.

This is a charming and entertaining read and I highly recommend it as I do with all of Jodi Thomas’ books.

Jodi wrote in an e-mail: “Like most writers I get the same question again and again. “Where do your ideas come from? Sometimes I have no idea where the seed of an idea started to grow in my mind. But, then I get out Grandma Kirkland’s button box….
When I was little, her big box of buttons always fascinated me. I played with it for hours. Now, in an upstairs room off my office, I gather the grand-kids (6,5,4,2) around the old sewing machine. They all get excited as I open the box and let each one pick a button. Old rusty ones, bright diamond bling, tiny pearl ones, some still have tiny pieces of fabric connected from worn out clothes. Continue reading “REVIEW…Ransom Canyon by Jodi Thomas”