Author Q&A with John McMullen, "The Inwood Book"

Meet John McMullen

John F. McMullen, "johnmac the bard", is a poet, author, journalist, technologist, college professor, consultant, and denizen of cyberspace. He is a graduate of Iona College and holds two Masters degrees from Marist College. He was an executive of two major Wall Street firms, an officer of three consulting firms (including his own), and has taught at NYU, The New School for Social Research, Marist College, Westchester Community College, and Monroe College. The title poem of his first poetry collection, "Cashing A Check," won third place in the 2009 Writer's Place National Poetry Contest. "Cashing A Check" was followed by three more collections, "Writing In My Head," the chapbook, "With A Chip On My Shoulder," and "New and Collected Poems". He is the author of "The Inwood Book", an omnibus containing poems, short stories and a novel, "Offering It Up", and the co-author of "Microcomputer Communications - A Window on the World" and was a contributor (with Esther Dyson, Ray Bradbury, William F. Buckley, Jr, Thom Hartmann, Steve Wozniak, John D. MacDonald, and many others) to the well-ahead-of-its-time "Digital Deli," the author of over 1,500 news stories, articles, columns, and academic papers, and the editor of "Web 2.0 The Magazine." He also maintains a blog, “johnmac’s rants”. He is a native of the Inwood section of Manhattan Island and resides in Jefferson Valley, NY, with his wife Barbara E. McMullen, an educator and entrepreneur. He may be reached at johnmac13@gmail.com and at Facebook and on Twitter.

About “The Inwood Book”

The novel portion of “The Inwood Book," “Offering It Up” had been running around in my head for over seven years. I began to get serious about it when I began to write poetry. Both were a departure for me as all of my published writing had been non-fiction about technology. A lot of my poetry revolved around the New York City Irish Catholic / Jewish neighborhood, of my youth, the same setting for the novel, so they fed each other. Once I completed the novel, it made sense to make it part of a “package” with the poems about the neighborhood and some short stories also Inwood-centered.

How did you get your start in writing?

I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote a piece in the seventh grade about Joe DiMaggio that was so good that the teacher accused me of copying from a sports magazine. In sophomore year in high school; I put myself in the first person of Joseph of Arimethia to turn a boring religious assignment into a short story and I was a sports columnist for the high school paper. I got sidetracked in college by beer and basketball and by the fact that I couldn’t type (I still can’t). After college, I spent 20 years in the Information Technology field, writing only business memos. It was only after starting my own consulting business, building a name as an expert with microcomputers, and latching on to an Apple II (allowing me to type, mistype, and edit) that I was able to write for publication when I was asked to do a piece for Popular Computing Magazine. This piece led to fifteen hundred articles, columns, and news stories. I never made enough writing “to pay the rent” but it was always the portion of my professional life that enjoyed the most -- I covered computer crime cases, trials, a suspected murder related to high-tech theft and wrote a lot of opinion pieces. Now, I’m trying to make writing my primary career (my son is a Hollywood screenwriter who has never done anything else; his success gives me something to shoot at).

What does my writing routine look like?

It’s too haphazard to be called a routine. I always have notebooks and my iTouch and T-Mobile G1 with me so ideas or full poems get written down immediately. I spend a lot of time at my local Barnes and Noble and usually have a Netbook with me and write quite a lot there. At home, my primary computer is a Macintosh – so the most current material is always on a USB drive around my neck for transfer to whatever computer that I’m about to use. – the USB also serves as a backup for the work. I don’t yet have a regimented schedule for writing – and I know I should. When I interviewed Mary Higgins Clark years ago, she told me that she got up at six each morning and wrote until lunchtime and Stephen King, in his wonderful “On Writing”, posits the need for a routine – so I know I should have one; I just haven’t gotten there yet.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire and why:

I read a great deal and admire many writers for different reasons. Ray Kurzweil and the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin boggle my mind because they are so bright and their brilliance comes through in everything they write. I love the way that Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin turn a phrase. Andrew Greeley’s ear for language is an inspiration to someone writing about “neighborhood people” while the bizarre humor of a Christopher Moore, Tom Robbins, or Christopher Buckley cracks me up and the tight dialogue of Robert Parker or Elmore Leonard is to be admired. Finally, I read a lot of mysteries and really enjoy Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins. Linda Fairstein, Robert K. Tannenbaum (really his ghostwriter), Patricia Cornwall, Michael Connolly, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain / Evan Hunter, Dorothy Sayers, Robert Crais, Kathy Reichs, Jeffrey Deaver, and Sue Grafton. – I could go on; when I’m reading mysteries, I usually do one or more a day; I’m very lucky that I read very rapidly (unlucky that I spend more on books than many small town libraries).

What are you working on next?

I have some poems in the safe, I’ve begun a sequel to “Offering It Up, and I’ve outlined some short stories that, depending on the timing, will either stand alone or be packaged with the novel.

What challenges did you face with this book?

Getting serious enough to write enough to let the characters take over and finish it for me. Hopefully, that will not be a problem with the sequel.

The Writing Porch Author Q&A with Jeremy Duns, author of 'Free Agent'

Trade publications and fellow thriller-writers are raving about the debut novel from Jeremy Duns, FREE AGENT (Simon & Schuster UK, Viking Penguin US), with William Boyd, author of Restless, describing it as “a wholly engrossing and sophisticated spy novel… fascinating and compelling,” and Jeff Abbott, author of Panic, raving “Jeremy Duns offers an entirely original and fascinating take on the classic spy novel in this provocative, fast-paced thriller,” calling him a “compelling new voice in suspense fiction.”

Book blurb on 'Free Agent' by Jeremy Duns.

Meet Paul Dark. In 1945, the British agent took part in a top-secret mission to hunt down and execute Nazi war criminals. But all is not as it seems. Almost 25 years later, a KGB officer turns up in Nigeria, where the Biafran war is underway, wanting to defect. His credentials as a defector are good: he has highly suggestive information indicating that there is a double agent within MI6, which would be a crippling blow to an organization still coming to terms with previous betrayals. Dark has been largely above suspicion during MI6’s years of self-recrimination, but this time he’s in the frame. Desperate to save himself, the morally complex and unforgettable Dark heads to Nigeria to confront the KGB officer—with fellow agent Henry Pritchard in hot pursuit. All too quickly it becomes apparent that everything he has believed about the events of 1945—which has formed the basis of his life’s work—has been a lie. This is especially devastating because the bulk of these lies center around a tangled web involving the only woman he has ever loved, and the death of his father.

FREE AGENT is a gripping spy thriller that combines the adrenalin-pumping suspense of a Jason Bourne film with a deeply researched Cold War background. It’s a novel of innumerable cliffhangers, all set within a constantly evolving moral universe, and the twists and turns will keep readers guessing—and sweating—until the last page. It is the first in a trilogy featuring Paul Dark.

Free Agent was published in the UK in May and will be published in the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere next month.

How did you get your start in writing?

I was a journalist for several years, but this is my first novel. I’ve wanted to be a novelist since my teens, but somehow I could never get around to it. Finally, one day, I decided it was time I should.

What does your writing routine look like?

I get up at 8 o’clock most days, and take the kids to school. After that I settle down and try to work until five, with a break for lunch. I do that five days a week, but I also work in the evenings and on weekends, depending on how fired up I am. In a way, though, I’m always working, because I can be doing something else entirely and thinking about the book.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire and why.

I write spy novels, and am a great fan of the genre: favourites include John le Carre, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and Elleston Trevor. I also love Lawrence Durrell’s novels. His style takes some getting used to, but I love the texture of his language and the rich worlds he built. The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet are like the greatest BBC costume dramas that haven’t yet been made. I’m also a big fan of the American travel writer Kate Simon, who I think had a brilliant eye for detail – her books have been a great help to me in my research, but they are also beautifully written.

What are you working on next?

I’m just starting work on my third novel, which is the final part of my Cold War spy trilogy featuring British agent Paul Dark.

What made you decide to write this novel?

In my twenties I started reading a lot of spy novels, and something about them struck a chord. I thought if I wrote one it might give me a structure that would stop me from being too self-indulgent. I started researching tentatively, just as a bit of fun, but then got more serious about it and as the ideas started coming together I became pretty obsessed with it.

What challenges did you face with this book?

Free Agent is set in 1969 and I was born in 1973, so getting all the period details right took a lot of work. And it’s also largely set in a war, which was – as wars tend to be – very complex, and I wanted to get that right, of course. Finally, it’s told in the first person by a character who is difficult to empathise with in many ways, but I wanted readers to empathise with him. So the voice took me a while to develop.

What advice would you have for other writers/would-be writers?

Keep going, even if you think what you’ve done isn’t any good. I spent a lot of time on the first few chapters worrying about every word. You will edit it dozens of times anyway, so try not to get bogged down with tiny details and just push on until you’ve got a complete draft. Nobody needs to see the bad drafts but you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Louise Larson, blogmistress for The Writing Porch, interviews published authors. To be considered, email her at jackielarsonwrites (at) gmail (dot) com. Larson's work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Dallas Morning News and Entrepreneur Magazine. She is the managing editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor at the Waxahachie Daily Light, and she has received the top award for series writing in Texas, the Texas APME, as well as a silver from the Parenting Publications of America. She co-authored a nonfiction career guide for FabJob Publishing in 2006. Her short story 'Mum in Decline' won third place in the Smoking Poet's annual short fiction contest. Larson is seeking representation for her new novel, 'At High Tide.'

The Writing Porch feature: Waxahachie writer stays friends with mentor, 100

By J. Louise Larson

Friendship spanning a generation and a world of experience has united two writers and their work.

In life’s twilight, multiply published author June Wetherell Frame turned 100 last month.

A generation and then some behind her, writer Pat Pratt is still collaborating with her mentor.

She visits Frame three times a week in the Trinity Mission nursing home in Italy.

The two women published a novel three years ago, the PublishAmerica romance “On With the Dance.” And they’re still working on character sketches. Plot ideas. Short stories.

And that keeps June Frame’s own personal storyline going.

“We talk about what we might write together, what to do about what we’ve got. Otherwise, I don’t know what’s going,” she said Thursday. “I don’t make for stimulating conversation.”

June Wetherell Frame grew up in a newspapering home. Her parents worked in the newspaper business in Washington state, her mother as a reporter and her father as ad manager for the Bellingham Herald, where young June Wetherell got her start writing – although her first appearance in print was in a photo when, as a toddler, she rode a stuffed elk in a parade in her native Bellingham, Wa. (Her father was a leader in the BPOE Elks fraternal order)

“Instead of drawing pictures that they put up on the refrigerator, I wrote stories," she recounted in an earlier interview.

She wrote feature stories for the paper, graduated from the University of Washington and was an editor at Family Circle. She and her late husband had two sons, and she launched her fiction-writing career.

Her first book sold in 1941 to a little-known publisher for the princely sum of $150. She and her husband spent it on a trip to New York.

Her husband helped her with her historical novels. Having taken fencing, he lent some credibility to her swashbuckling scenes.

She was willing to try her hand at anything.

"Science fiction – that was hard," she said. "It came out pretty well, but a reviewer said it was very poor science fiction."

By the time she was 80, it got too hard to find agents because they had doubts about what she could produce and promote.

Clearly, they didn’t know June Wetherell Frame.

Frame’s writer’s mind that cranked out potboiling novels by the dozens in her day is still sharp, still looking for that perfect word. Even now, at the century mark, her blue eyes are still bright but focused, sometimes, on that fading light.

Frail and curled up in her bed, her hours and days tend to blur together, and some days, the dreams win.

“When you come here, at least I know it’s real,” she told Pratt.

“Her body’s just 100 years old, so it’s wearing out. It’s frustrating for her, her mind wants to do things, and her body won’t let her,” Pratt said.

“I help her stay in this world. Otherwise, she can go into her own little world after a while. It’s important to keep her frame of mind in the right place. Some days, neither one of us is a very good conversationalist,” she said with a bit of a smile.

“Some days we’re able to talk about whatever comes up. Anything to keep the conversation going, to keep her in reality. Sometimes we read. Sometimes I come down and have lunch with her.

“It’s nice to be able to visit with her but sad to watch her fade away,” Pratt said. “Her body’s just 100 years old, so it’s wearing out. It’s frustrating for her, her mind wants to do things, and her body won’t let her,” Pratt said.

“I just don’t think I have another novel in me,” Frame told her.

So they work on short stories.

What would June do?

So what would an oft-published writer give a writer just working on getting into print?

Here’s a century of writing advice from a 100-year-old writer, culled from several interviews:
"Selling it is twice as hard as writing it, to me," she said. "Maybe it will sell, maybe it won't sell, but it's done. Don't go into novel writing to make a living. You've got to do it because you love it. It's no way to earn a living.

“Just do it – don’t talk about it so much. For God’s sake, write it.

"Writing comes first – everything else in life has to work around it," she said. "When I had little kids, I wrote when they took naps, and I'd find time to write. When they went to school, then I had time to write.

To generate ideas, she has kept a leather-bound notebook, now tattered with age, filled with thumbnail character sketches – people she meets, people she imagines.

"I make up the people, get a setting and figure out where it is going," Frame said. "I put them in different situations. I've never been able to start with the plot. I'm not strong on plot – my books are character driven. When I'm writing a book, they just come right on through.

"Put your character in a situation and make the reader want to see how it's resolved."

Pat Pratt echoes her mentor’s sentiments.

"Making time to write – that's something June always stresses. ... I've learned to 'write in spite' – of everything and everyone around you. I have learned that although age may diminish our physical abilities, it does not need to diminish our capabilities. Age is not an excuse," Pratt said, borrowing Frame’s catch phrase for her writing philosophy: “Write in spite (of).”

Denouement

After years of writing and newspaper work, Pat Pratt has found the courage to go out on a limb and self-publish. Her recently released “Finding Peace” (PublishAmerica) is a dramatic novel with elements of the supernatural. It’s based on a character sketch she developed.

“I was inspired by June to write this book. I never would have been able to get through this one … You are, in great part, responsible for me getting this done,” she told Frame.

“I was so excited when June asked me if I’d help her write, and three years later when we saw it in print, that gave me the courage to finish mine.

“I probably would have still been worrying over it had I not been working with her on her other book. She made me believe I was a real writer,” said Pratt, who shepherds the Ellis County writing group, Write On!

Pat Pratt feels, and sometimes sees and hears, her mentor letting go of earthly ties. And that makes her a little sad.

“It’s hard to think of coming to see her three times a week and watch her fade, but it would be harder to not come and see her, knowing she has so few days,” Pratt said.

“She’s been a great inspiration to me – that’s what I want to give back to her. I come to see her to inspire her to keep going, as long as she can.”

For one thing, Pratt made sure Frame’s portable electric typewriter sits at the ready in its sacred spot on a small desk, a tabula rasa – blank slate - waiting for Frame’s arthritic fingers to wreak magic from the QWERTY keys once more.

"That's as modern as I get," Frame said in an earlier interview. "Picture Charles Dickens sitting there with pen in hand. I don't see how he'd have written all those books."

Once in a while, Frame will greet her faithful old typewriting friend as she passes by.

“Hello, old friend,” she’ll say. “Well, it didn’t growl at me, so I guess it’s not too mad at me.”

The invitation is still there, the paper white and fresh and inviting, neatly coiled in the carriage, awaiting her expert hand’s tap of the carriage return. Any time, it seems to say. Any time.

“She’s slowed down a lot, but she’s still got a lot of ideas. If she feels the urge, she can still get up and type,” Pratt said.

The urge to control the written word remains. Curled up, her skin faded nearly to alabaster translucence, June Wetherell Frame is still self-editing at 100, with her trademark wry sense of humor.

“Polish me up a little. I hope you make something of me,” she tells her interviewer.

Blogmistress for The Writing Porch, J. Louise Larson contributes to WNI News papers, and is managing editor of the Ennis Journal. Her novel, At High Tide, is in revisions. Again.

Author Q&A with Luigi Morelli, 'Revolution of Hope'

Author and trainer Luigi Morelli says his faith in social change from a cultural perspective has evolved through a combination of training, education and unique personal experience. He teaches “Non-Violent Compassionate Communication” based on Nonviolent Communication as developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg. In 2003 he was a founding member of the Wavecrest /Friends of L’Arche community for the disabled (part of the international federation of L’Arche communities), in Orange County, Callifornia, in 2004. Morelli holds a masters degree in environmental sciences, and has lived in Europe, South America and Africa. He has resided in the US for the last 22 years. His book, Revolution of Hope is due out momentarily from Trafford at www.Trafford.com.

How did you get your start in writing?
I am originally more of a researcher than a writer. English is not my first language so I need an editor. As a researcher I am someone who has a passion for asking questions that matter … I ask questions and then dig under every stone to find leads, and new answers leading to larger questions.

My first question leading to a book came to me on a warm spring day along the banks of the Delaware in Philadelphia at what is called Penn’s Landing. I love Philadelphia and its historical background and that day my attention lingered on a tall bronze statue of the Native American Tamanend (St. Tammany). The caption at the foot of the sculpture said he was patron saint of the colonists, and his festival was celebrated on May 1. I was inspired and tickled to death by the idea that a Native American could be a patron saint for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. I thought I would just find a nice book that would explain it all. I ventured into libraries and bookstores asking for something that I thought everybody knew. Not so, in spite of (the statue) standing in front of everybody’s eyes in Philadelphia. I started digging out information about St. Tammany and living with this image in my mind and heart. Two other similar questions came my way about related topics: one through a movie (Squanto), the other through a Native American legend (the Iroquois legend of the White Roots of Peace). This led to my passion for writing and to the first book Hidden America.
What does your writing routine look like?

Writing, reading, musing at images, legends, biographies, reflecting at life questions that have accompanied me for more years than I can tell … I help myself with notes, I draw connections. If it is a myth or a legend I make sure I read it slowly and fully; read as many versions of it as possible; let the images live vividly in my imagination; let them converse to me on a daily basis. Depending on how large the question this process can take from months to many years; I don’t have control over the length of it. At other times it is a matter of living through some life experience, especially socially transformative processes which are what I am most interested in.
When the material starts to settle I generally start thinking of an artistic form to give it, something like a thread or a structure that can give the reader added interest and that helps me organize the material in a way that offers me support, creativity and fun. This is the most creative part. After that it’s a matter of iterations; going through the parts and making sure that the material is organized coherently; returning to the whole and see if the parts add up coherence; returning to the details and polishing them, etc.

I can do this while working on more than one project at a time since I don’t give myself deadlines.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire and why.
Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) for an inspiring book written by a first time doctor-turned-author. It is thoroughly engrossing, a page turner. At the same time it is universal.

Atwater, P. M. H. (Beyond the Light: The Mysteries and Revelations of Near-Death Experiences) for sound common sense and for taking on daringly original perspectives, casting light on the fascinating topic of near-death experiences.

Nicanor Perlas (Shaping Globalization: Civil Society Cultural Power and Threefolding) for wresting a coherent image of hope from a world in which I could see little.

Brown, Juanita and Isaacs, David. (The World Cafe: Shaping Our Future Through Conversations That Matter) for a book that is a delight of originality, practicality, stimulus for thought.

Greaves, Helen. (The Dissolving Veil, Testimony of Light, The Wheel of Eternity) She writes of her own spiritual experiences with sobriety and discernment, avoiding sensationalism and self-aggrandizing.

Wheatley, Margaret J. (Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World) for an engaging synthesis of natural scientific discoveries and what they mean for social science, particularly leadership.

What are you working on next?
I want to continue the work I started with Spiritual Turning Points of North American History with a sort of twin volume about South America. The first work places in parallel historical research with myths and legends of North America about a figure that is known from all of North and Central America, a civilizing hero of the Americas who is known as far south as Patagonia.
The book will be an attempt to show that the Western scientific mind can be reconciled with the Native American consciousness; in essence that the natives know what they talk about when they speak about their history in the language of myths and legends. Now that I’ve done the first part for North America I want to do the same for South America, taking Peru as the starting point, since this is where we can find the largest historical and mythical record. This is exciting because I am partly Peruvian by my mother and because I know many of the places and legends that I am exploring, plus have a natural passion particularly for the legacy of the Incas and for the Native culture of the Peruvian mountains (particularly Cuzco and the high plateau of the Titicaca).

What made you decide to write this book?
Of all the questions I wanted to write about those I confront in A Revolution of Hope are the ones I initially wanted to answer for myself alone. I had been a social activist from my early youth, and the questions of social consciousness, right livelihood and spirituality have accompanied me lifelong.

What advice would you have for other writers/would-be writers?
Trust that your life questions are important. Let them lead you to the goal and give them the time that they need, not the time that you need. It doesn’t matter if a book takes ten years while another may take six months. You can write more than one in parallel.

Trust that you will have access to artistic creativity in the process. You don’t need to be a ‘Ulysses’ Joyce or Shakespeare, but you can still find ways to render your material interesting, and discover resources you didn’t know you had.

Your own growth is what matters: don’t measure yourself up to unrealistic yardsticks.

Favorite Links: http://www.cnvc.org/.

EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Louise Larson, blogmistress for The Writing Porch, interviews published authors. To be considered, email her at jackielarsonwrites (at) gmail (dot) com. Larson's work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Dallas Morning News and Entrepreneur Magazine. She is the managing editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor at the Waxahachie Daily Light, and she has received the top award for series writing in Texas, the Texas APME, as well as a silver from the Parenting Publications of America. She co-authored a nonfiction career guide for FabJob Publishing in 2006, and is ALMOST finished with her new novel, 'At High Tide.'

Author Q&A with Carolyn Turgeon, author of "Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story"

Carolyn Turgeon was born in Michigan and grew up in Illinois, Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. After graduating from Penn State, she earned a Master's in Comparative Literature from UCLA, and spent several years in New York working as a writer and editor. Her first novel, Rain Village, was published in 2006 by Unbridled Books (320pp). Her second, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, was published in March 2009 by Three Rivers/Crown in the US and Headline in the UK (288pp), and has been optioned for film by Random House Films/Focus Features. She's currently working on her third novel, a retelling of the the original little mermaid story.

Where is home for you?

I was living in New York City and working full-time at a non-profit until last spring, when I quit my job and began my career as a full-time gallivanting authoress. Now I go between State College, Pennsylvania, and New York City and Cornwall, New York, and I’m probably heading to Berlin this fall.

Where can we find your work?

You can buy my first novel, Rain Village, online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon and Powell’s, etc., and my second novel, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, which just came out two weeks ago, online and in almost any bookstore.

How did you get your start in writing?
I’ve been writing since I was a little kid. I was always a dreamy, bookish kid, and wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I wrote my first book when I was 8, “Mystery at the Dallas Zoo,” about a group of kid sleuths searching for a stolen tapir.
As for how I got my start officially, I took writing workshops in college, I spent many years turning a story from one of them into my first novel, I started sending out query letters to agents and I also contacted my old writing professor Paul West, who passed me onto his agent Elaine Markson, who offered me representation, and then, eventually, I got a publisher. I didn’t publish short stories first the way a lot of writers do. Rain Village was my first fiction publication.

What does your writing routine look like?
I would like to have a more disciplined routine, but for the most part I’ve written in fits and starts and up against deadlines, even if they’re self-imposed. But lately I’ve been better about getting up early in the morning, heading to a coffee shop, and writing until lunchtime.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire and why.

I admire so, so many writers, but here are a few:

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, because he’s the perfect storyteller and writes the most wonderful tales.

- Patricia Highsmith, because she’s clean and elegant and precise and there’s this perfect sense of creeping dread in everything she does.

- Daniel Woodrell and Francesca Lia Block, two totally different writers with insanely unique, wonderful voices.
- Michael Cunningham, because his sentences are so gorgeous, and there’s a weightiness and profundity to his descriptions of even the most mundane things.
- Mary Gaitskill, because of the way she deals with pain and sex and desire.
- Jennifer Belle, for the flat, dry humor that infuses everything she writes.
- Jeffrey Eugenides, for the crazy, jam-packed mastery of Middlesex and the hushed elegant weirdness of The Virgin Suicides.
- Alice Hoffman and Isabel Allende, for their lush prose, their magic realism, and their ability to be both hugely commercial and literary at the same time.

What are you working on next?

For my third novel, I’m working on a retelling of the original Hans Christian Andersen little mermaid story. I’m telling the story of the princess—the one the prince falls in love with and marries instead of the mermaid, and who only appears briefly in the original story—as well as the mermaid. It’s set in the middle ages and it’s all gloom and ice and castles and convents. Sort of The Other Boleyn Girl-ish, but glittery and sad and with mermaids. It’s called The Sea Queen.

What made you decide to write this novel?

I wanted to work with an established story, a gorgeous old fairytale, and play with it, I guess. Cinderella is about as lovely and well known a story as I can imagine, and I liked the idea of telling the fairy godmother’s story—the one whose task is to swoop in and get this sad, abused, orphaned girl ready for the grand ball. I mean, once you really look at what she had to do, it seems a pretty impossible task, doesn’t it?

What challenges did you face with this book?

I was living in New York and working full time when I wrote Godmother, and that is certainly a challenge—making the time for it, finding the discipline, saying no to friends and turning off Law and Order. Plus it took me a long time to really figure out what story I wanted to tell. I wrote at least 100 good pages that I ended up not using, maybe more.

What advice would you have for other writers/would-be writers?

Two of the most important things are this, I think: 1) Don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea of writing a novel, just break it down and tackle it bit by bit, scene by scene, page by page. And: 2) Have absolute confidence and faith in your vision and work. I have no idea how anyone could get through writing a whole novel without that. You have to have an unshakable belief that it will be worth it.

Favorite Links:
http://devotchka.net/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://crudethings.com/
http://www.andrewhamiltoncrawford.com/
http://www.parkeharrison.com/
http://www.josephcornellbox.com/
http://www.bindlestiff.org/
http://www.girdlebound.com/
http://kittywigs.com/
http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Louise Larson, blogmistress for The Writing Porch, interviews published authors. To be considered, email her at jackielarsonwrites (at) gmail (dot) com. Larson's work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Dallas Morning News and Entrepreneur Magazine. She is the managing editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor at the Waxahachie Daily Light, and she has received the top award for series writing in Texas, the Texas APME, as well as a silver from the Parenting Publications of America. She co-authored a nonfiction career guide for FabJob Publishing in 2006, and is seeking representation for her new novel, 'At High Tide.'

Author Q&A with Martin Avery, author of The Devils Wear Bauer (Not Prada)

Martin Avery is the author of two new books out about the #1 bad boy of the NHL, the hockey player they call the Superpest and the King of the Agitators. And the guy in the Gap ad that People magazine said is one of the sexiest men alive.

The Devils Wear Bauer (Not Prada) is the unauthorized biography, describing where he came from and how he got kicked out of the NHL. Sean Avery: Hope And Change: The Comeback of the Rocky of Hockey is about his return to the NHL.

Where can we find your work? You can find it at Lulu.com: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=3176762

How did you get your start in writing? I started out in the little literary magazines and later went to Vermont College for an MFA in Writing.

What does your writing routine look like? I write fast and I write a lot. I listen to what I've written on my computer. I love novel marathons like NaNoWriMo and the Muskoka Novel Marathon.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire. Wally Lamb was at grad school with me in Vermont. His first novel was great. I'm reading his latest right now.

What are you working on next? Book three in the Sean Avery trilogy is about the New York Rangers "Cinderella" season. After Avery's return, they turned around, got out of a bad slump, and sprinted for the play-offs.

What made you decide to write this novel? I've been following this hockey player's career since they played Junior A and this year he turned into the best story in the NHL so I felt I had to get out a book or two.

What challenges did you face with this book? Dealing with publishers is the biggest challenge.

What advice would you have for other writers/would-be writers? Do it!

Favorite Links: The Bleacher Report http://bleacherreport.com/articles/117764-the-devils-wear-bauer-not-prada-the-sean-avery-movie

EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Louise Larson, blogmistress for The Writing Porch, interviews published authors. To be considered, email her at jackielarsonwrites (at) gmail (dot) com. Larson's work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Dallas Morning News and Entrepreneur Magazine. She is the managing editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor at the Waxahachie Daily Light, and she has received the top award for series writing in Texas, the Texas APME, as well as a silver from the Parenting Publications of America. She co-authored a nonfiction career guide for FabJob Publishing in 2006, and is seeking representation for her new novel, 'At High Tide.'
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Author Q&A: Tom Cain on 'No Survivors'

EDITOR'S NOTE: J. Louise Larson, blogmistress for The Writing Porch, interviews published authors. To be considered, email her at jackielarsonwrites (at) gmail (dot) com. Larson's work has been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Dallas Morning News and Entrepreneur Magazine. She is the managing editor of the Ennis Journal and a contributor at the Waxahachie Daily Light, and she has received the top award for series writing in Texas, the Texas APME, as well as a silver from the Parenting Publications of America. She co-authored a nonfiction career guide for FabJob Publishing in 2006, and is seeking representation for her new novel, 'At High Tide.'

What's your book about? 'No Survivors' is about Samuel Carver, the protagonist, who is a hired assassin, paid to remove dangerous individuals who are beyond the reach of the law.

As it says in my first book about him, 'The Accident Man,' he does very bad things to even worse people. Specifically he creates accidents that make their deaths deniable. His victims have it coming – with one very significant exception that provides the story of 'The Accident Man' - but even so, Carver is profoundly conflicted about his work, morally and psychologically scarred by the corrosive effect of violence and death. His greatest hope of redemption lies in the love he has for his Russian lover Alexandra ‘Alix’ Petrova, but both their circumstances and their characters complicate matters, to put it mildly.

Plot-wise the story of 'No Survivors,' which is set in 1998, involves missing Soviet nukes, a Texan billionaire with a longing for The Rapture, the rise of al-Qaeda and the conflict in the former Yugoslavian province of Kosovo. Fundamentally, though, it’s about Carver, Alix and the twists and turns in their relationship. Even in a thriller, all the action, excitement and tension in the world mean nothing if you don’t care about the man and the woman at the heart of it all.

Where can we find your work? I sincerely hope you can find it in your local bookstore! And if not, you can certainly find it on Amazon.

How did you get your start in writing? I’ve been a professional writer since I was 19 – which was a LONG time ago! – and have done most of my work as a magazine editor and newspaper journalist in London.

What does your writing routine look like? Day-by-day I start work at 10.00am, but tend to do my best writing between about 4.00-8.00pm. In terms of the Carver books, I start thinking of them in the early months of the year … gradually accumulate research and ideas through the spring and early summer (all the while working on other assignments and projects) … start writing in about August … begin to panic in October because I don’t have anything I like … knuckle down again … gradually pick up speed and deliver in mid-January.

Tell us some writers whose work you admire. Among thriller, crime and adventure-writers … Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, Alistair MacLean, Wilbur Smith, Mario Puzo, Dennis Lehane, Michael Crichton, Dick Francis, Lee Child, James Lee Burke, Stieg Larsson, David Chase (creator of the Sopranos), Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow (the creators of 24) … all those classic British murder queens: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, PD James, etc … and in other genres I’ll throw in Tolstoy, Jane Austen and Anthony Powell. Shakespeare had a pretty dab hand with plot and dialogue, too, come to that!

What are you working on next? I’ve just handed in the third Carver novel, Assassin, to my publishers and am starting on No.4 soon. What made you decide to write this novel? Contractual obligation!

What challenges did you face with this book? Well, there was the general second-novel challenge, which is that you fill your first story with a lifetime’s worth of good ideas, and then you’ve suddenly got to do it all over again, and almost certainly much more quickly. Specifically, I had the problem that 'No Survivors' follows on directly from 'The Accident Man,' which ends with Carver in a pretty bad way (I won’t say more for fear of spoiling it!), with the result that he’s incapable of action in the early stages of 'No Survivors.' Having a semi-vegetative protagonist, it transpired, was a very, very tricky proposition when writing an action-thriller. But I hope I overcame that difficulty!

What advice would you have for other writers/would-be writers? Keep going. Don’t let rejection and failure get you down. Learn to sort the useful element in any criticism from the nonsense that surrounds it. Obsess about the structure of your books: getting that right is far more important than worrying about fancy prose. Create believable, interesting, multi-faceted characters. And never forget that you write at the service of the reader. Yes, you should express yourself. Yes, you must follow your own passions and instincts. But writing means nothing if it does not communicate.

Favorite Links: http://authorsplace.co.uk/tom-cain/ (This is a British site, but it’s the best place to find out about me). http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=654275624 (I’m always interested in making new Facebook friends) http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Tom+cain&x=0&y=0 (Because you’ll want to be buying the books, right?)

YA author Rhonda L. Davis helps young readers manage dark topics

This article originally appeared in the Jan. 1, 2009 edition of the Ennis Journal and the Jan. 4, 2009 edition of the Waxahachie Daily Light.

With the success of supernatural teen and young adult series like the Twilight and Harry Potter series, American authors are discovering a new niche.

The author of four books and an audiobook, Ennis High School teacher Rhonda L. Davis is finding a place for her own work within that niche.

Stepping into the realm of fantasy provides a chance for young readers to safely manage dark topics, she said.
“They’re very intense – they deal with issues people deal with in a world that’s not as confrontational,” she said.

“These are dark things children have to deal with. This is a way they can fit in and change the course of humanity.”

Davis’ books are family-friendly, she said. She has been careful to leave out cuss words and other material that might be objectionable.

She comes by her talent honestly. Her mother was an editor at the Stephenville Tribune, and her uncle an editor-in-chief. And her late father was a storyteller who wrote novels and poems who encouraged her budding creativity, she said.
“He worked on me – he thought he could make a writer out of me, with painting and poems. He had these characters he would talk about – the Daredevil Girls from Bunker Hill. He was always trying to get me to tell the Daredevil Girls stories in book form,” she recalled.
After he died, she found a letter from her father, asking her to write a book.
“He gave me the beginning of it – it started out with a teacher with red hair,” she said.

She was also inspired by a game she learned in childhood called the Courage Game – you take a colored stone you’ve chosen that represents yourself, and you carry it into dark, scary woods, walking until you’re too scared to continue, and that’s where you drop the stone.
Playing the Courage Game with modern teens, she has noticed a generational change, Davis said. “I’ve found today’s children are very desensitized to fear,” she said.

Following the path her father started her down, Davis penned “The Daredevil Girls from Bunker Hill,” which follows the story of Nancy Jordan, a teacher at a small town middle school in Texas who lives a safe, uncomplicated adult life until her youthful past comes back to haunt her.
When her students find out she was once a member of the famous Daredevil Girls from Bunker Hill, a group of young people who fought evil supernatural beings in the 1980s, she is asked by the principal to share stories at an assembly – and things escalate from there.
In a sequel, “Faces of Darkness: The Daredevil Friends,” Jordan is the new principal at her school. She teams up with the Daredevil Friends, a new generation of supernatural crime fighters, to take on some of the “faces of darkness.”
In Body of a Horse, Heart of a Man and its sequel, Return to Concorde Valley, modern and ancient times collide and modern young mortals gets caught up in the lives of Greek gods.
“I’m afraid I have the ancient Greeks rolling over in their graves, but that’s how it goes,” Davis said with a chuckle at a recent book talk/book signing event.

Rhonda L. Davis has some advice for up-and-coming writers:

Have a support group. Her audio book was done with the help of her husband, composer and musician Stephen O. Davis, and Ennis High School teacher Barbara Webb.

Delegate what you can.

Don’t be afraid to self-publish. “When somebody owns your book, they own it. I’m first of all a teacher. If the big guys get me, they own my life.” To that end, she has formed her own small publishing company called Splendor Books.

Be prepared to do your own footwork. Davis was startled to learn she had to write her own author’s bio, and her own summary, for example.
“He said he lies for a living – you make the facts up as you go along,” she said.

Take advantage of what you know. “I know something about physics – why not mess with it?” said Davis, who teaches physics.

You’ll need to make the time to write. “Mostly it’s found by not watching TV,” Davis said.

Be prepared to revise, revise, revise. Davis says she’s not a writer – she’s a rewriter. A book that takes her a month to write takes two months to rewrite.

And, perhaps most importantly, take courage. “I was scared the first time I got published. If I could have dropped that stone long ago, I would have,” she said with a smile.

Writing Porch Author Q&A: Yvona Fast

The Writing Porch's J. Louise Larson interviews authors for other writers to watch, listen and learn from. To be considered for a Writing Porch Q&A, contact J. Louise Larson through the Comments feature: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=518671822507077211&postID=5145601248816180676

Author: Yvona Fast

Book: Employment for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome or Non-Verbal Learning Disability: Stories and Strategies.

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004, 272 pages, trade paper

Other publications: This book was recently translated into the Polish language; Yvona Fast's articles have been published in E, the Environment Magazine; Adirondack Daily Enterprise; Lake Placid News: American Small Farm; Vibrant Life: Home Cooking; Woman's Touch; American Health & Fitness; Health and Home; Equal Opportunity: Adirondack Explorer; OpEd News; Miami Family; ATA World; Asperger's Journal; Minority Engineer; Lifeglow; Advance; Christian Single.

Bio: Yvona Fast is an author, freelance writer, food columnist, editor, researcher and speaker living in northern NY state. For more information see her web site, www.wordsaremyworld.com

About Employment for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome or Non-Verbal Learning Disability: Stories and Strategies: My book is a career guide for individuals with Asperger Syndrome or Non-Verbal Learning disability. There are personal stories of people grappling with work issues as well as practical advice on dealing with these issues.

Why this book? I was driven to write this book. I saw the need through a listserv I was on for people with these disorders. They kept saying 'there is nothing out there for adults.' Now there is.

How did you get a book published? I sent out query letters to publishers, and got a response from Jessica Kingsley.

What was the biggest challenge for you about this book? For my writing and speaking, my biggest challenge is the marketing part of it.

What's your favorite kind of writing and why? I enjoy writing essays and articles. I enjoy doing the research. My wiring is fact-based. Writing fiction is much more difficult. I don't have the imagination and I find it very difficult to create scenes.

What advice would you give other writers? Networking is key. As in everything in life, it's not what you know but who you know that matters.

What projects do you have coming up? I write a weekly food column which I'm trying to syndicate to more newspapers. I'm also working on a cookbook and a memoir with my mom.

http://www.amazon.com/Employment-Individuals-Asperger-Non-Verbal-Disability/dp/184310766X

The Writing Porch's J. Louise Larson is a Texas-based writer whose work has appeared in major magazines and newspapers. She is the author of The FabJob Guide to Party Planning. She is the editor of The Ennis Journal and a contributor to The Waxahachie Daily Light.

Which publisher offers the best publicity for your book?

Want to find the publisher that offers the best publicity for its authors? Interested in a book tour?

Don't count on it, unless you're a celeb.

In today's marketplace, the more responsibility you assume for publicity and promotion of your book, the better.

You can hire your own publicist -- or become your own publicist.

Up front, it looks like no publicity leads to poor book sales leads to no money for publicity -- a downward spiral where it's not the book's fault, or the author's fault.

Instead of assigning blame, the proactive author takes responsibility for book publicity.

Press releases, book interviews, win-and-cheese book signings, author's tours. Blogs, small newspaper/radio interviews.

I know a writer who got a big advance for her novel, but then was crushed by a lack of promotion, and went somewhere else with her next books.

It sounds to me like it is now expected that, outside of blockbusters, writers will do much of their own promotional work -- and publishers are expecting them to. I love this one: Jump Start Your Book Sales: A Money-Making Guide for Authors, Independent Publishers and Small Presses by Marilyn Ross and Tom Ross (Paperback - Mar 1999)

I also have the Guerrilla Marketing Guide for authors.

I also found these ones online but haven't read them: The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity: A Comprehensive Resource Guide -- From Building the Buzz to Pitching the Press by Lissa Warren (Paperback - Dec 9 2003)

Publicize Your Book by Jacqueline Deval (Paperback - April 1 2003)

The Complete Guide to Book Marketing by David Cole (Paperback - Feb 28 2004)

1001 Ways to Market Your Books, 5th Edition by John Kremer (Paperback - May 25 2000)1700 Ways to Earn Free Book Publicity: Don't Pay to Market Your Writing by Anne Hart (Paperback - Feb 2006)

Selling the Book: A Bookshop Promotion Manual by Sydney T. Hyde and Sidney T. Hyde (Paperback - Sep 1986)

The Web-Savvy Writer: Book Promotion with a High-Tech Twist by Patrice-Anne Rutledge

Author 101: Bestselling Book Publicity by Rick Frishman (Paperback - May 31 2006)

Have Book - Will Travel: A Guide to Book Touring Out West by Dorothea Fuller Smith (Paperback - Nov 2003)

The one by Tom and Marilyn Ross knocked my socks off, it was that good. The other thing to remember is to apply other marketing strategies, the kind that apply to the promotion of almost any business.

The problem for many writers (and this will continue to be more and more of a problem as publishers demand more and more PR work by the writers themselves) is that they only see themselves as writers, not as marketers. They don't want to have to do something as crass as shill their books.

That's what sales tools are for -- even something as small as putting a link to a place to buy your book in your email signature. I designed and ordered postcards to promote the career guide book I co-authored. I did this even though it was a work for hire and I would receive no royalties, not a drop more cash from that publisher. I did it in an effort to brand myself as an author.

Every email that goes out on every regional story I work on for regional mags and papers has a signature promoting my book, articles, website, radio commentary. Hopefully, next time a book comes out (that I DO get royalties on), regionally, people will say "I heard of her ..."

Scott Turow, the legal thriller himself, talks with J. Louise Larson about his writing process

Scott Turow's legal thrillers have been translated into more than 25 languages and sold 25 million copies worldwide. His first novel, Presumed Innocent, was made into a film starring Harrison Ford.

Still a practicing lawyer (Turow is a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal), Turow also writes nonfiction about his own profession: His first book, One L documents his first year at Harvard Law School. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty was published in 2003.

After a recent reading and signing in Dallas, Turow spoke with me.

J. Louise Larson: Your latest novel, Ordinary Heroes, takes readers into the territory of history. Talk about bringing history into your work.

Turow: Half of The Law of Our Fathers was set in California in the 1970s and required quite a bit of research. Of course, World War II was a period when I was not alive. I enjoyed the research more than I expected. ... If there's something that bores you to dig into, you can leave it out. And there are advantages. History sets boundaries that don't exist in contemporary fiction. The war in Europe was going to end in May 1945. I had no decision about that.

J. Louise Larson: Kindle County and its recurring characters could be considered a study in establishing a setting and people readers can get into. Why did you create a fictional tri-cities area and how does that work for you as a writer?

Turow: Kindle County was created by accident. Presumed Innocent was originally set in Boston, but I spent so long writing it that Chicago, where we were living for years by then, had infiltrated the setting. So Kindle County was born. When I decided to write next about Sandy Stern, the lawyer in Presumed Innocent, I had no choice about staying there. By now I've taken up permanent residence.

J. Louise Larson: You're a practicing attorney and many of your characters are attorneys. Is this “writing about what you know,” truly something you're fascinated with, or both?

Turow: I do like lawyers, God save me, but I like the law as a subject even more. The struggle of the law to impose reason on life is both morally worthy and frequently impossible. It's a wonderful theme.

J. Louise Larson: How did you get started as a writer? Your memoir of law school, One L, is a cult favorite among those who have been there or are considering being there.

Turow: I got my start as a writer in college, at Amherst College, where I was given my senior year off to write fiction fulltime, under the guidance of Tillie Olsen, Leo Marx, and David Sofield. After that I was a writing fellow at Stanford, and a lecturer at the Creative Writing Center after that. Having channeled my talents a little made it possible for me to write while amid the law school hothouse. It would be a tough environment in which to start.

J. Louise Larson: Tell us about your writing routine—environment, research, process, whatever. How do you get from the seed of an idea to a finished manuscript?

Turow: It's very haphazard. I think for a long time, then I start writing fragments, pieces of scenes, descriptions of characters, background, patches of dialogue. It's kind of like the nebulae swirling to become stars. Things accrete, eventually moving toward a shape. I write principally at home, but have been known to pull out my laptop anywhere, including the commuter train, airplanes, but very, very seldom in the law office.

J. Louise Larson: What makes a great read? Who do you read?

Turow: A coherent imagined world makes for great fiction, a world compelling in its details. I read more "serious" fiction than anything else. Recently, I've liked Benjamin Kunkle's Indecision, and was impressed by Banville's The Sea.

J. Louise Larson: What advice would you give a fledgling writer?

Turow: Just do it. Writers write. As my friend Tom Zigal, a Texas novelist, puts it: "You've gotta log a lot of pages to learn how to do it." Learning how to connect thought and feeling to words takes practice, just like anything else in life worth doing. (This interview was originally conducted for an article for mediabistro.com.)