PUBLICITY

Publicity for your writing projects is essential to spread the word about your work.

I’ve done a fair number of radio programs over the years and I enjoy the format.  You can either go to the studio and sit with the host or you can call in and be interviewed over the telephone.

I was invited one time to speak on a book I had written called Merchants of Ignorance, about the public school system, and the host was so enthralled with the topic that he kept me on the air for two straight hours.  This was WOAI Radio in San Antonio, 50,000 watts, so we boomed across America.

You can’t buy publicity like that.

The trick is that the writer has to really know his topic, and, he has to be an engaging guest.  I do well at talking off the cuff, so I’ve always totally filled the time of any program I’ve been on.  In fact, normally the half-hour or hour goes so fast that the hosts often invite me back.

If you are good at something—radio, TV, internet programs—then make yourself available for interviews.  

This publicity is worth its weight in gold.

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USING FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN DIALOGUE

The Look For Me series has a smattering of foreign language.  I use other languages to add depth and color to some of my characters.  So far in the series I have included Dutch, French, Chinese and German.

Realizing that most English speaking readers will not be fluent in other languages, I use a technique that I think keeps the color but allows the reader to sail through the passages without running to the dictionary.

The trick is to say what you want to say in the foreign language and then paraphrase it within the context of the passage.  Here is an example from Knew You Before:

As she approached, Clemmens heard her coming and stood up.  He held a stein high into the air.

                “Meta!”

                Meta kicked Mope gently and she speeded up a little hill where Clemmons had built his fire.

                “Wie geht es Dir?”

                “Jetzt, da ich bei Dir bin, geht es mir sehr gut,” he replied with a smile.

                Meta loved to be flattered.  Now that she was there he was very well, he told her.  But she was nervous, too. She felt her heart beating wildly in her chest.

                “Lass mich Dir runter helfen,” said Clemmens as he reached up to help Meta down off the horse.

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EDITORIAL SUPPORT

It is essential as a writer that you have good editorial support.  No matter how much you think you get it all right, it is easy to make mistakes that you don’t notice when you are so close to something.

A good editor will catch your errors before they are published and make you look good.

The most recent project, which is Book 6 of the Look For Me series, titled Knew You Before, has some German dialogue that is intermixed with the English.

My general editor is a retired emergency room nurse from Canada.  She’s very thorough and does a great job of finding my errors.  But she does not speak German.

So fortunately I have a friend who was born in Germany and was able to rework my German dialogue so that it would sound right.

She said that the way I wrote some of the German sounded like a foreigner writing it.  Just as in English, there are ways of saying things that you can’t simply translate literally. 

The bonus is that she is a fan of the series and so getting her to study the German passages for grammar was not difficult.

People who like your work are your best supporters!

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ACCURATE IMAGINATION

HORSEMANSHIP.  The sixth book in the Look For Me series is called Knew You Before and there is a wonderful scene in which one of the characters is a young, beautiful, innocent, vulnerable woman who is covered over with responsibilities.  The setting is 19th Century and she takes a chance and rides her horse at full gallop across a wide open field.

The experience is so exhilarating for both her and her horse that she releases the reins and puts her hands out as though she is flying.  If you can imagine the scene on the motion picture screen, here is this big, powerful animal with all his muscles flexing, hot with sweat, charging ahead totally free, hooves just pounding the ground and the character is hanging on with just her legs, dress flying in the wind (yes, she’s in a dress), hair trailing behind—if you can imagine that—then you will have an understanding of the character and how she feels at that moment in time.  Of course, then, the horse leaps over something and we see this magnificent image in slow motion.  Wow.  Can’t wait.

But what about reality?  What about accuracy?  Originally I had the character release the reins and hold onto the saddle horn with one hand.  But, I sent the scene to a young lady I know—because I knew she had ridden horses all her life—and she said, no, you would never hold on to the saddle horn as I described it.  Instead, what you’d do is loop the reins around the horn so they don’t cause a problem, and then, if you are an experienced rider, you can put your hands out and pretend you are flying.  So, I made adjustments in the scene and there you have it. 

Fiction is a matter of imagining things, but, you have to imagine them accurately.

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WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW

Many writers will tell you that you should “write what you know.”  While I agree with that to some extent and even use that as one of the tips to writing fiction, it bears emphasis that you don’t have to draw from personal experience in order to write an engaging scene.

For example, you can write a space capsule scene without ever having flown in space.  However, to do a credible job of that you have to really understand what it is like to fly in space.  How do you do that?  Research, of course.  Talk to people who have done it.  Study what’s been written about it, look at films and photographs.

I have a unique perspective since I am both a psychologist and a journalist.  My mom used to say that I could ask more questions than anyone she’d ever met.  (I learned that from her when I was a teenager.)

When you ask questions, you learn.  But you also have to pay attention to the answers and you have to be able to put yourself inside the emotional  ether that surrounds those situations.  What did it look like?  How did it feel?  What were the fears?

So yes, you “write what you know” but you also “write what you research.”  The Look For Me series is a product of that.

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HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FICTION

HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FICTION.

The fun thing about writing historically accurate fiction is that you can interject your fictional characters into settings that really did happen.  Then, with the license that comes with authorship, you can alter reality, or, use your characters to explain how and why things “really” went down.

The key is to have a solid understanding of history as it was reported (knowing full well that whoever wins the war gets to write the history books.)

In the Look For Me series I alter time and space and that’s the element that makes the books so entertaining.  Even though you may know your history and even though you think you know what the characters did in the pages you’ve already read, ha, ha, what you believe to be true may not always turn out that way. 

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OSWALD DIDN'T DO IT

OSWALD DIDN'T DO IT.  If you want to know who killed JFK, my opinion is in Book 5 of the Look
For Me series, title, Without You.

A lot of researchers agree that Lee Harvey Oswald was more than likely just a patsy as he announced to the world on one of those famous Dallas Police perp walks.

Kennedy was set-up for extermination and Oswald was set-up to take the fall.  Nov. 22, 1963.

The world would have been a very different place had JFK not been murdered.  The CIA would have been dismantled.  The Federal Reserve would have been shut down and, the US would have pulled out of Viet Nam.

Today, the military industrial complex runs the show, along with the corporations and their banksters.  The more you learn about what really goes on behind the scenes, the more your head will explode.

What is the saying?  Deal with reality or reality will deal with you.

There is an alternative.  The Look For Me series is a nice escape from the realities of everyday existence. It's a fun and thought-provoking read.  That's one of the reasons I started writing the series.

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INTRODUCTION TO BLOG.

The CIA, NSA, FBI and all the other cereal companies have their work cut out for them.  I know who I am, but with all the computer passwords, login names and virtual identities, sometimes I'm not even sure.  So good luck, guys, sorting this all out.

I hate passwords.  Loathe them.  I can't remember them and they are supposed to be hard to guess so I use really complicated things and then have to constantly get help figuring out how to break in to my own stuff.

In the social networking world, there is no standardization and for a mere mortal, this stuff is just too complicated.  I miss the Big Chief Tablet and the No. 2 pencil.

That's how writers used to write.  But not anymore.  Oh, no, everything has to be "secure."

So welcome, and goodbye.  If you want to know what a writer / photographer faces every day when he wakes up with a creative mind and if you would like to join the journey from imagination to silver screen, come back.

It all started in 2008... ah, more of that later.

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