Lewis Perdue's Blog, page 15

Why The National Parks Need To Scare Hell Out Of Its Visitors

The wilderness is wild. It will kill you if you aren’t trail smart.

That’s one of the things I try and teach son William, and daughter, Kate (above). That photo was taken on Kate’s first backpack this June, in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness area (just over the hill from the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center north of Bridgeport.)

There are wild things in the WILDerness just waiting for the unwary to think they have wandered into a Disney, imagineered animatronic exhibit. But the microbes, lions, and bears and other creatures are real. So are the cliffs that can kill you and white water that will snuff you out.

And rocks that can fall and avalanches that can sweep and bury. Lightning which can turn you into a crispy critter in a flash and wind that can do anything it wants with you.

Even if you are trail smart, some times it’s tempting to push on “just a few more minutes.” (See my recent, almost-dumb experience: Climbing Mt. Langley: Slow Ascent, Lightning Descent)

Severe cold can flash freeze you like a frozen brisket. Soft, sneaky cold can hypothermia you gently into the big sleep.

Heat can stroke and trees can topple over on you while you’re in your tent.

There are so many ways to die in the WILDerness.

And no matter how much you respect the WILD or how many decades you’re spent learning to stay safe, fate can happen. I’ve spent more than half a century backpacking and I am still amazed at just how “on your toes” you need to be.

But no more on your toes than a city dweller … who needs not to get hit by a bus, not to stumble in front of a subway. They learn to dodge the supersonic cab rocketing down Second Avenue and know not to wander cluelessly into sections of the metropolis known for drug dealing and drive-bys.

“Avoid the third rail!”

That’s a “well duh!” for city folk. But what if you come from most places without subways? The WILD has its own equally lethal equivalents of the third rail that must be learned and respected.

And of course, no matter how good you are in the city or the wilderness, weird shit does happen. But, for the most part, risk can be well managed by good street smarts … and trail smarts.

I am very sad when good, naive people step into the wild and die. These are headlines from last week:

Boy dies, brother missing in river in Yosemite
Yosemite tourist dies after contracting hantavirus

The park service can’t pad every rock or fence every foot of a trail or stream. If they did, it would look like the zoo and nobody would come.

BUT … The National Park Service could help visitors by scaring the hell out of them.

They should not let anybody in without being clear — graphically “you could die!” clear — that the WILDerness must be respected.

The Park Service must go farther. It must emphasize that WILD has neither heart nor compassion. And that people without trail smarts will almost always be the first to die.

My heart goes out to every one of those who die needlessly because no one told them to respect the wild or die. The parks must do their job even it scares some people away.

Killed four people this morning in Nassau, Bahamas.

A few blocks south of Bay Street. Near a ritzy private bank.

My heroine was responsible for three of the mortalities. All very bad guys.

She’s very good. Right now, her name is Petra Armstrong, but I am not fond of the name. (Abject apologies if that’s your name … no offense. Really!)

If you want to be a dead-shot heroine and have her named after you, put your name in the hopper here: http://lewisperdue.com/?page_id=2580

Coming soon: Be My Bookselling Partner, 50-50

I’m setting up a system for anyone who likes my books to be my equal partner … sell a book through Smashwords, make 50% of what I make.

Smashwords system is a little complicated right now, so son William is doing some programming that will make it very, very easy for you.

I’d like to do the same at Amazon, but they don’t let me control what % you can make. And their % is very low.

Stay tuned.

Mozart Symphonies Help Me Kill

I’ve killed more people, in more creative ways, while listening to Mozart than any other music.

You might think that Heartless Bastards or Van Halen might produce a better body count.

But no.

There’s something about the mathematical precision of Mozart — especially the symphonies — that sync with my brain waves and inspire creativity of all sorts.

And that includes making sure that the high body count expected from a thriller is executed in the most creatively entertaining manner possible.

Somehow, Mozart allows me to “be” in a scene, to see, feel, smell, hear … experience what is happening. Not just for ending a character’s life, but for bringing them to life in electrons and on paper.

Mozart allows this weird recursive sense that I am personally present in a scene that exists only inside my head. And further, that I am inside the head of a character who exists only inside my head. I call this “the zone.”

Of course, I bring a lot to the zone: research and as much hands-on experience as possible including the act of using as many of the firearms and other ordnance I use in the book.

For both Perfect Killer and Die By Wire, I fired thousands of rounds of 30.06 ammunition with my Smith & Wesson model 1500 at a local range  … up to 300 yards … to get a solid feel for the scope, the reticle, the “zero” of the rifle, the effects of the loads (from 140 to 220 grain). And for Die By Wire, I shot a Barrett Model 99 .50-caliber rifle because I needed to know how that felt. (More about all my books in all formats at http://lewisperdue.com/lewbooks.shtml.)

Know how it felt.I bring that into the zone. That, does have limits. I haven’t fired light anti-tank weapons, set and detonated C-4 charges or killed anyone. Still, I have interviewed people who have. But that research comes into the Mozart zone with me.

Once I get into that zone, everything else — including time — disappears. I can write for an hour and a half and come out of the zone wondering where the time went. Creating the environment for this means eliminating distractions. I write fiction in an 8×10-foot room with no windows, no internet connection and nothing around me but the book I am working on. It becomes the zone.

I work on a mid-1995 Dell Pentium I running Window’s 98. And I never, EVER do anything at all — NOTHING — in that space but write fiction. Anything else pollutes the zone.

Non-fiction is a completely different mind-set. I have a larger space filled with files, notes, high-speed broadband. I listen to Slacker radio alternative channel while writing. It’s a different zone: Heartless Bastards work here. So do Green Day, First Aid Kit, Mumford & Sons, MGMT, Train, Superchunk and many more.

I don’t understand why. But it works. So I do it. And, so far, I’ve never killer anyone to the songs of The Killers.

Irony works wonders.

Broken Publishing’s Big Author Problem: Nobody Ever Runs Out Of Electrons

Branding expert David Vinjamuri has written an astonishingly intelligent piece in Forbes that nails just about all the most salient issues dividing indie and traditional publishing.

No matter what side of this issue you’re on, you’ll be better informed after reading his piece: Publishing Is Broken, We’re Drowning In Indie Books – And That’s A Good Thing.

VINJAMURI NAILS THE MARKETING IDIOCY

As the author of 20 traditionally published books  — including three bestsellers including one that made the NYTimes lists — I can verify that Vinjamuri certainly nailed the miserable non-job that legacy publishers do with marketing.

Yes, most authors will complain (mostly with good reason) about marketing and PR. Publishers usually dismiss them as idiot savants who should let “those who know” tend to those matters.

But I’ve served as a former Managing Director of Manning, Selvage & Lee — one of the largest global communications and marketing companies — and can say that what I see legacy publishers call “marketing” is almost always bush-league bumbling that would never rise to world-class status.

And least you think that ‘Managing Director” is just a dime-a-dozen honorific like being a bank vice-president, managing directors comprise eight of the 18 upper management positions at MS&L.

That’s not to say I am a genius, but I do know more than average when it comes to marketing and promotion.

But I have yet to have a publisher of any of my books accept for free, my services that businesses — from the Fortune 500 to tech start-ups — have paid $225/hour for.

‘IN PRINT:” THE MASTADON IN THE ROOM

What Vinjamuri  left out is only the most important issue facing an author’s decision on whether or not to go indie or pursue traditional publishing.

The fact is that once you sell your ebook rights to ANYONE, you have lost control of your book forever.

Nobody ever runs out of electrons. So, your rights are gone, gone, gone.

Nine of the books at my book page, Lew’s Books, are traditionally published books to which I got the rights back after they were out of print. Those contracts were written before the advent of ebooks.

I have re-issued those books and they’re selling like crazy, specially the newest ones posted (Queensgate Reckoning, The Tesla Bequest, The Linz Testament and Zaibatsu) which have a solid Cold War thread which has had a resurgence of interest now that Vladimir Putin has reconstituted the medieval totalitarianism of the old Soviet Union.

Because I own the rights to those books, I can set the price, edit to remove any typos or scanning artifacts and promote as I see fit.

But the three books still published by a legacy publisher: Daughter of God, The Da Vinci Legacy and Slatewiper, languish, unpromoted. And the legacy publisher’s ebook versions are defaced with so many careless scanning errors that readers are constantly posting complaints about them online.

But you see: I don’t own those rights anymore. And even though the books earned back their royalties a decade ago and are still selling, the publisher never sends royalties.

So, having sold the ebook rights, I have to sit by and watch over-priced ebook editions filled with scanning crap languish. The publisher doesn’t care.  And I have no financial incentive to promote the books or spend time to try and get them to do the right thing.

Oh yes, and even if the publisher did pay royalties, they would be on the order of 18% … far beneath the 70% range I get from Amazon, 82% from Smashwords and 60% from Apple’s iBookstore.

AUTHOR BEWARE!

Whether indie or legacy, most authors will have to do their own marketing and PR. But the long-term issue is whether they are prepared to turn over their baby to a legacy publisher who will hang on the book forever and most likely will do an abysmal job of promotion and an even worse job on the fundamental basics of ebook publishing.

 

War Is Not The Answer? Sometimes It’s The ONLY Answer.

War Is Not The Answer?

Really?

Ask a Syrian. Or a Libyan. Or an Israeli. Or George Washington.

War is often the only answer.

This is a core issue in my book, Perfect Killer . The characters are not just gung-ho “kill’em all and let God sort them out” types.

They struggle with the fact that freedom requires sacrifice. And the maintenance of freedom requires the willingness, the guts and the ability to wage war.

The better you are at war, and the more willing you are to to war over important principles, the LESS likely war becomes because no one wants to mess with you.

It’s called deterrence.

The world remains  a nasty, Darwinian place that requires overwhelming force and superior firepower to maintain peace. We cannot love our enemies to death or negotiate insane people into sanity. Sometimes peace requires war.

And the only thing worse than war is losing one.

Perfect Killer is available in the iBookstore, B&N and others. see this link: http://lewisperdue.com/lewbooks.shtml...

Why Did I Write The (Almost) Same Book Twice?

The Linz Testament ≈ Daughter of God ≈ The Da Vinci Code

I wrote the (almost) same book twice then The Da Vinci Code ripped them both off.

Why did I write the (almost) same book twice?

Because the first time was good. But not the way I wanted.

So like a lot of painters, I went back to the same subject.

What were the themes that needed further exploring?

(1) The concept that organized religions have become massive, self-serving bureaucracies more concerned with their own well-being than the spiritual lives of their members.

(2) The established fact that in human history, God was a woman before S/He was a man.

(3) The established fact that holy scriptures and dogma have been edited to support #1, above and to marginalize #2, above.

(4) That the conflict created by all of the above creates a real-life human drama that can be explored in fact and fiction.

So, I wrote The The Linz Testament in 1985, and continued to study history and biblical scholarship. By 1997, I realized that I had failed to mine a number of rich veins of history and theology that needed closer looks.

That’s why I wrote Daughter of God.

Daughter includes a lot more research into the divine feminine and its origins. And eliminates at least half a dozen characters and about 175 pages of older chapters and sub plots. And adds about 100 new pages.

And why did Da Vinci Code rip off those two books? For that I have no answer. Maybe because it was good?

On the other hand, The Linz Testament is now back in print.

COLD WAR THRILLER

If you liked Daughter of God, you’ll probably like Linz for the ways it’s different and the ways it’s the same.

In addition, The Linz Testament has a lot of Cold War elements that were passe’ by the time Daughter was published. But thanks to the thuggish KGB behavior of Alexander Putin, the old Soviet Union is back as a failed state run by a state-sponsored Mafia.

Which means the Cold War is back in vogue, and so are all those pre-Berlin Wall elements that Putin is reminding us of. And the cover art, above. Hammer. Sickle. Shroud. Think about it.

NO DAUGHTER OF GOD LINK

I haven’t included a link here to The Da Vinci Code for obvious reasons. I haven’t included a link to Daughter of God for two reasons.

(1) Despite earning back its advance more than a decade ago, Forge/Tor continues to sell the book but does not pay me royalties.

(2) The Forge/Tor e-book versions of Daughter of God are filled with scanning errors and other crap that readers complain about. And Forge/Tor doesn’t care.

So, buy The Linz Testament. Finally back in print and if you find scanning errors, I will fix those immediately.

 

 

Post(coital)script To Last Post On Book Sex

In the process of writing the last post (Fifty Shades Of Book Sex?),I was Googling around for some Sidney Sheldon background and came across Writing a Sex Scene by writer Jessica Barksdale Inclán who actually taught this at UCLA Extension.

Humorous, informative and on target. Read this if you’re thinking of writing one. The entire post is great, but I liked this part:

So my tack was this. Stay with the plot and stay with the feelings. While in a romance the hero and heroine HAVE to end up together, it doesn’t have to be a circus act. The sex arrives out of their connection or growing connection.

And then—stay “in” the body. Don’t focus on the body itself. We don’t have to look at the parts but feel the parts. And sex doesn’t have to be in the genitals but in fingers and rib cages and toes. Things don’t have to be literally explained, either. As one writing teacher told me, avoid fluids. I am big on avoiding fluids. There are enough fluids everywhere, so can we please stay with the feelings?

Fifty Shades Of Book Sex?

The success of Fifty Shades of Grey — and the book world’s rush to embrace its profits and success — raise the question of whether you can no longer sell a book without some heart-thumping, explicit and kinky sex: kinkier even thane Leda and the Swan.

The Atlantic Wire’s Jen Doll wrote a terrific piece about this: Does Every Book Have to Be Sexy Now?

“Of course erotica, even the BDSM kind, has been around for a lot longer than the first book in the Fifty Shades trilogy.

“When we applaud ourselves for discovering this whole new untapped genre (that has actually existed for ages), we can’t separate the popularity of the books from the hype about the books.

“All this media attention, all these people talking and writing about the series, positively or negatively, gets more and more people to buy the series. The sales secret of Fifty Shades is not sex.

“It is publicity, a publicity machine, really. The amazing, unexpected, frequently grassroots publicity about this book, and not the content, is what’s new.”

Of course, this has massive, throbbing, turgid implications for authors.

Of course.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Yep, Doll is right that sex in books ain’t new.

Interestingly, the 1980s had a similar trend of graphic, explicit sex. This was pre-AIDS territory where the sexual revolution had a lot more than fifty schools of outrageousness. Nothing was taboo. The kinkier the better.

My editors encouraged  excess and outrageousness, and so I obliged them. Pinnacle sold several million copies of those thrillers. Of all of them, Queensgate Reckoning probably had more lurid sex than any other.

After Queensgate was published in 1982, one book reviewer dubbed me “the Sidney Sheldon of thrillers.” I was never actually sure whether that was a compliment or not.

When I wasn’t writing books, I honed my sex scene skills by writing the odd couplings that were supposedly sent in by Playgirl readers … you know, sex with aliens, sex in bank vaults and atop symbolically phallic television towers and high rises.

I was on the faculty at UCLA at the time teaching journalism and never, ever mentioned any of this to anyone.

There. I have confessed. The weight has lifted almost like … nevermind.

THE COMING TREND

Over the next few years, with the rise of AIDS and other biologically creative STDs, sex in books grew softer, more cautious, less explicit and extreme. Indeed, the sex in my 2005 thriller Perfect Killer was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “almost chaste.”

So now, as I finish Nassau Directives for fall publication, I face a dilemma: I wrote the first draft of this book back in about 1989 or so and originally had an over-the-top, Caligula-like orgy scene aboard a super-yacht. And a few other explicit and off-beat sex scenes.

I eliminated some of the scenes and turned the volume on that orgy way, way down, from XXX to almost R.

So, now with the 50 Shades phenomenon swelling like …

I wonder if I should put them back in. Amp things back up.

Share your thoughts about this on Facebook, Google+ or elsewhere to let me know what I should do. I listen to my readers.

Please Note: I use various links to my books in this and other posts. But every link to every book can be found on my web site at Lew’s Books.

 

Climbing Mt. Langley: Slow Ascent, Lightning Descent

Mt. Langley, marked with an “A” is the mountain I climbed last Saturday. Mt. Whitney is at the upper left. Click for larger map.

Climbing up Mt. Langley’s 14,042 feet was the easy part.

Getting down alive was a bit tricker.

The seven-mile hike from Horseshoe meadows was also not bad and the additional three or four miles to the summit was smooth except for the short class three scramble (The Yosemite Decimal System rating climbs says Class 3:  is “Scrambling with increased exposure. A rope can be carried but is usually not required. Falls are not always fatal.”)

Not always. But that was not my problem either.

What WAS the issue was the weather. And staying alive.

First Issue: As I was coming up toward the summit, everybody else was coming down.  I went on up.

Second issue was all the clouds coming in. Some of them ominously dark, just above my head. And their bigger siblings closing in from the distance.

Thunder clouds at Mt Langley. Click image to enlarge.

So I took my last photo (above) and scrambled up over the steep class three rocks like a mad man.

In the forefront of my mind was friend and Boy Scout leader Stu Smith … of Smith-Madrone Winery. Almost exactly seven years ago — July 29, 2005 — Stu was leading a group of seven scouts and five adults on the seventh day of a nine-day camping trip in the Sequoia National Park.

That day, they were near Sandy Meadow, west of Mt. Whitney and about eight or nine miles northwest of Mt. Langley where I was racing the storm.

Lightning struck. My friend Stu was injured but survived. Assistant scout master Steve McCullagh, 29, was killed. Scout Ryan Collins was brain dead. His organs were donated to save other lives. It took five helicopters to evacuate the rest of the injured.

My son, William, was 12 at the time. We attended the memorial service for Collins. The day stuck in my mind.

Up on Mt. Langley, if I had the time and stopped to look, I could have seen the spot of that tragedy.

Then the third issue arose. I was within sight of the register to sign that signified that I had completed this 14K peak. Within sight of the USGS marker that I could take a picture of with my books.

I ran like hell to reach it.

Then the hair on my forearms stood up.

Static electricity.

My research on lighting prompted by the earlier deaths told me that was a harbinger of immediate lightning.

I made a descent from the summit that was less like running and more like Buzz Lightyear’s “falling with style.” Class three scrambling? Hell, I don’t even remember that section. I flew.

In record time, I was several hundred feet below the surface. Thunder came from the summit.

The memory of Stu’s scouts just may have saved my life.

The mountain will always be there for me to sign. And thanks to Ryan, Steve & Stu, so will I.