THE THRILL OF WRITING THRILLERS

The insanity  required to write about murder and crime on a daily basis takes it's toll on normal people. I, a thriller writer of five novels filled with murder, killing, action sequences that would make Bruce Willis cringe, find it most comforting. At the end of the day, I sleep like a ....dead man? My fifth book, JUNGLE RULES, will hit the Ethernet book stands in about ten days. It's very exciting to see one of my novels on amazon, B&N, and about two hundred other sites....  and people actually buy them....It's a miracle. BUT, I calculated up the hours spent, the frustration level, the act of killing so many people, the editing......gets me way less than minimum wage. I wonder if I could apply somewhere for a Fed hand out?

AND Face Book is driving me nuts. I get caught up in some conversation that's going no where and the next thing I know, Ive missed my word count for the day.

I try and do at least two thousand words per day. What do normal writers do? More? Less? I'm curious.

#lThe Crime Of It AllThe Crime Of It Allinks

#links

The Crime Of It AllThe Crime Of It All

#links

TheWriteGame: Literary Dialect

TheWriteGame: Literary Dialect

SUSPENSE WRITING IN ACTION CAN BE A REAL THRILLER

I started a new book today and probably shouldn't have. I finished Jungle Rules last week and the characters and storyline are slopping over to the new story. I need to give myself more time between books. The story line and action from Jungle Rules, are still very vivid in my mind, especially the last two chapters that are loaded with a lot of action and dialogue. The voices are still bouncing around inside my cabasa. The problem is that I need to write, I can't seem to stop. I spent time on face book and worked on my blog trying to make since of the marketing and selling side of our chosen field. I swear, I would rather knock out a couple of suspense-filled chapters than play nice on face book and come up with ways to entice readers to visit my website to make that all important sale. Years ago I took a sales course at UCLA. The entire semester could have been summed up with these four steps.
1. Make the appointment.
2.Sell the product.
3. Sell the price.
4 Ask for the order.
BINGO! Deal closed. Now that I think about my writing career, the same marketing principles apply. Just substitute the first step from "Making the appointment " to "Write the Novel", then follow through with the other three steps. Sounds easy, right? NOT! All kinds of factors jump in to keep one from success. In our industry it is supply verses demand. Too many of us after that Holy Grail, a number one best seller. Thank God for all the new electronic publishing and gizmo's coming out. It gives us a fighting chance against the system. Am I thinking about this right? Let me know what you think. Are we just little critters without a chance or are we lumps of coal turning into diamonds.

JUNGLE RULES

I finally finished Jungle Rules. By far, it has been the toughest book to write in the John Locke Series. Plots, sub-plots, sub-sub-plots, main characters, featured characters, minor walk-ons, and a whole lot of action. Bringing it all together kept me up several nights, tying all the lose ends together. The most interesting part, was the research into voodoo and African Spiritualism, and how it evolved from dozens of tribes, coalesced in Haiti, then spread out to the other Islands, and the American South. The geological research was almost as tough. To find several trillion cubic feet of a gas-oil arousal mix in the Caribbean was quite a feat. In the end , it turned out to be a lot of fun to write. Now, the hard part starts, selling the thing.

THE FEW. THE PROUD.

Happy Birthday to all Marines.
Mike Pettit, 0341 Forward Observer.
Ist Bn, 3rd Mar
Sempre Fi, Until I die

CRAP FICTION

I just finished with Book #4 in the JOHN LOCKE THRILLER series, JUNGLE RULES. The last three chapters were tough to get through just to bring everything together. I did a fast edit on WORD and burned off a copy to read. When I write, I usually don't go back and reread as I go along. I know the main plot, characters, sub plots...etc, but until I read the final, I'm never quite sure if it is as good as I think it is going to be. Am I the only one that works that way? I always work to get the words down as they burn through my imagination, not even worrying about spelling or punctuation at that point...just get the words down on the pages. I know when I'm on a good run when my fingers are running about a mile behind my mind.
What are other techniques that can be used. The speed writing is fun, but cleaning it up afterwords is a chore. The first thing I plan to do when I win the LOTTO is hire an editor in-chief.

VEGAS ODDS MAKERS TAKING BOOK ON BERNANKI AND FED BLOW OUT

BASIC RULE #1 When you find yourself in a hole. Stop digging.
BASIC RULE #2. You can't borrow money from yourself if you're broke.
BASIC RULE #3 Never spend more than you bring in.

The Vegas Odds Makers are shaking their heads today, wondering what the F*** is the FED doing. Mr. Bernanki announced that he was going to 'Monotize"the debt to the tune of six hundred billion dollars, that's $600,000,000,000.00, In other words, he is going to PRINT 600B to buy U.S. Bonds with that won't be worth the money they are printed on.  Smoke and Mirrors. The Chinese won't buy anymore of our JUNK BONDS, so the Fed ( Think Smoke Filled Back Room) decided they would sell the JUNK BONDS to themselves. The catch is, We The People are the suckers.
As an Author I could not think up a better Wall Street Crime story. The sad part is the ending to this story is going to be tragic for America.
FIGHT BACK, JUST SAY NO, I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

IT'S OFFICIAL. GOOD NEWS , BAD NEWS

The BAD NEWS first. No matter how I count up the votes, I lost the election. I voted sooo many times I lost track: Absentee, early, write in, cross-districts, cross county, cross state lines....and I still lost. You can count on your fingers and toes the total number of votes I got. Bummer!
The GOOD NEWS? I finished my JUNGLE RULES manuscript last night while watching the national returns. It was easy, every time one of my candidates lost, I would bump off one more mutt. I'll have to re-read the last two chapters to get the body count, but man-o-man what an ending. Now comes the hard part....read the entire manuscript to make sure there are no loose ends, dangling participles, some dame I forgot to kiss goodbye, where I hid the loot, what happened to the drugs...you know, important stuff.
Fellow writers: WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, write your way out of writers block.