David Dennington's Blog, page 6

Part Four. On Writing: My Journey with The Airshipmen.

The next thing I had to deal with was editing, line editing and proofreading. I had my daughter assist me with this. She is the most well-read person I know and a great editor—another super-smart person who really ‘gets it’. Formatting became an important issue. I had to learn about both for Kindle and the paperback version.

I decided to include a few illustrations in the book to help readers visualize some of the scenes from those bygone days and worked on adapting photos for that purpose. As you know, novels don’t have photos, only nonfiction books do. Therefore, with help of a good friend, I found some old photographs and made them into pencil-like drawings. I was pleased with the result.

The next step was to create a website. This in itself was a lot of fun. I spent a couple of weeks on this with my daughter-in-law, who is good at that stuff. So, with the book cover, the text and some nice reviews I’d received, the website was up and running. Any new writer who wants to market their books would be well-advised to do this.

Once all this was done, I signed up with Createspace and uploaded the book. On there, you can see your book as it will appear when printed. If there are any errors you can make revisions and re upload. The next step was to order a proof copy. Writers will tell you that receiving your book in print form for the very first time is a magic moment. I can tell you, it’s true.

With the hard copy now in print, it was time to go to work on the Kindle version and with more help from a fellow first-time writer, we completed that formatting task and uploaded the Kindle version on Amazon.

The next phase, the one I am in now, is marketing on Amazon. This, I’ve found to be quite fascinating—addictive at times. I still have much to learn and I have found the folks at Amazon, CreateSpace and Goodreads (another great Amazon company) are helpful and nice to deal with. Goodreads is a huge social site with lots of interaction like Facebook, but dedicated to book-lovers. I still have much to learn about Goodreads and have been reading 'Goodreads for Authors: How to Use Goodreads to Promote Your Books' by Michelle Campbell-Scott. I found this book helpful as a new writer stumbling around on a site with more than 40 million members rather like a bull in a china shop. Michelle’s book also pointed me towards Cheryl Kaye Tardif’s book, 'How I made $42,000 in One Month Selling My Kindle Books'. That book has useful information for writers new to marketing.

Then came the business of reviews. Since publication, I’ve been struck by how varied peoples' tastes are! Some said it was too long. Others said they were sorry when it ended. Some said they didn’t like the politics (I studiously tried to keep politics out of it and tried to be fair), one person said I’d taken the good airship/bad airship approach—and in that regard I’d meticulously sort out problems and faults with both airships, as well as crewmen, officers and government officials. Some said the book was too heavy—not much I could do about that except make it into a three-part series! I could of course advise such folks to read it on Kindle! I’m sure there are some people who might say ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Gone With the Wind’ or ‘The Devil in the White City’ were boring. The truth is, you can’t please everyone—and perhaps that’s a good thing. Still, I struggle not to take comments personally! But I must say that when you receive a five star review it’s like shot of something magical in both arms—especially when the reviewer is a woman! Why do I say that? ‘What woman is going to read a book with a title like The Airshipmen’, people kept asking me. 'It's about people and the cards they are dealt,' I told them. 'It's about life.'

On Writing: My Journey with The Airshipmen. Part Three

In setting up 'The Airshipmen' and all its characters, I struggled with the ‘point of view’ (POV) question. Since it had so many characters, the reader could not see what they were all doing unless the story was told from more than one point of view. I decided to tell the tale from the POV of the four main characters—Lou Remington, a young American marine, Lord Thomson of Cardington as well as their love interests; a Romanian princess, and Yorkshire lass. But switching between these four characters began to worry me. Had I messed up? This question was answered for me when I read an excellent book by Albert Zuckerman, one of the great New York literary agents, 'Writing the Blockbuster Novel'. He is Ken Follett’s agent. For me, that turned out to be a godsend.

Rather than telling you how to write a big best seller, as the title suggests, Zuckerman gives advice on how to write a story of epic proportions (as historical fiction often is). He says in such stories it’s necessary to write from as many as four points of view. To illustrate his point, Zuckerman carefully analyzes, among others, Ken Follett’s books. Naturally, I was more than pleased to hear that—quite by accident, or instinct, I’d got it right.

I should also mention two other books which I found enormously helpful as a new writer. The first was 'The First Five Pages' by Noah Lukeman. The second was 'Self-Editing for Fiction Writers' by Renni Browne and Dave King.

Once the first draft of the novel was finished and after carrying out extensive research, I found a highly experienced and gifted editor, Steven Bauer. Steven had been the Director of Creative Writing at Miami University, Oxford, OH. He now owns and runs Hollow Tree Literary Services. He read the manuscript and gave me some wonderful suggestions on how to make it more powerful and alive. Steven totally ‘gets it’. His encouragement was invaluable. I would urge any writer to engage a talented editor such as Steven—as it will truly bring your work up to the next level. Initially, upon hearing how long the book was, he said it was too long and would be hard to market. I therefore immediately cut out one of the longest chapters. After he’d read it, he said, ‘You need to add more to this book, it’s not quite long enough and ends too abruptly.’ He also said, ‘historical fiction is traditionally longer than regular fiction—it’s not an issue’. So, I added the chapter back in and I think it works much better. Steven's attitude is ‘follow your instincts, they are usually right.’

I had a book cover professionally designed very early on, and it proved very useful and gave the book credibility when sending it out to agents and also looked good on email flyers.
The next phase was seeking out an agent who would read it and sign up a publisher who would carry out editing and marketing. I sent out 160 query letters to literary agents in the US and Great Britain.

No luck.

From there, I realized self-publishing was the only way to go. Luckily, by this time self-publishing was a completely respectable business. The book publishing world had been turned on its head. Now there were more steps to be taken and new processes to be learned!

The first was to decide what platform to use. Out of all of them, I decided on Amazon (the biggest)—CreateSpace for the paperback and Kindle for ebooks. To accomplish this, I read a few books on publishing on Amazon. There are a few good ones out there on the subject.

On Writing: My Journey with The Airshipmen. Part Two

As time wore on, James Cameron began making his masterpiece ‘Titanic’—and on and on I typed in my basement—kind of like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. My friends and family thought I’d gone completely mad. My R101 story was a sort of Titanic tale, but related to aviation, albeit just as tragic in human terms—imagine a whole nation and its Empire in mourning, and a funeral as massive as that of Princess Diana.

The workshops I attended at the Writer’s Center were great fun. The other would-be screenwriters often wanted me to read their parts when we read aloud segments of each other’s screenplays. ‘We want to hear that British accent,’ they would say, and I was pleased to oblige.

By this time, I had culled down my screenplay and turned it into two separate stories. I should also say that one of them, the ghost story, did well, making it into the quarterfinals of both the Austin Heart of Film and the Cinestory Screenplay Competitions. Believe it or not, for me, this was every bit as good as winning!

By now, Cameron’s film was finished and was a massive box office success. I used the magnificent soundtrack music to keep my inspiration going. I knew this thing I was writing was going to be a massive success too! Hollywood would soon be beating a path to my door!

But it never happened…

After a massive number of rejections from agents and film production companies it all petered out and I took a breather—a long breather. I have to admit I was dispirited. My love for the story and the real characters never waned, however.

After a long layoff, friends encouraged me, as did professionals in the film business, to think about writing these screenplays into novels—‘they are great stories’, they said. I decided I would save the screenplay I liked the best (the ghost story) and write the other one first, in order to learn the craft of novel writing.

Gradually, as time wore on The Airshipmen took on a life of its own. I became merely the typist taking dictation. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy… I typed over and over. No, just kidding! Some days, I never knew where it was all leading. Things happened, people popped in and out of the pages, got roughed up, bullied or even murdered. Things I had no idea were going to happen, happened. It was a roller coaster, to be honest—and turned out to be the best time of my life.

So, even if I never sell another copy of this book, it will have all been worth it.

In my next blog I will tell you about challenges I faced and things I had to learn: using POV, my attempts at finding an agent, formatting, editing, self-publishing and deciding on using Amazon platforms, my book cover, setting up a website, learning about Amazon and Goodreads marketing and books I’ve found helpful along the way.

On Writing: My Journey with The Airshipmen. Part One.

It has been suggested I should write about my experiences in writing this epic—and that’s what it turned out to be, an epic - in order to help other new writers. Some people said ‘The Airshipmen is much too long, cut it down or make it into three novels’. I looked at that, but it couldn’t be done. I could have made it into a three-part series, but I thought it would irritate some readers if each part could not stand alone. I even sent the first third to a journalist friend to read. He sat glued to it reading furiously for two or three days. When he’d finished that segment he said, ‘So where’s the rest? I need it and I need it right now!’ So that answered that question for me.

I’ll start at the beginning. I’d always wanted to write. I worked in the construction industry at management level on all types of projects. That business is a ‘stop and start’ business. It fluctuates with the economy and as soon as there’s a hiccup, construction is always the first to get slammed. So, during one of my unemployed periods I read a book that rekindled my interest in both the paranormal and airships, going back to my teenage years reading Nevil Shute’s ‘Slide Rule’. I did research and wrote a thousand pages of notes on the great airship R101 tragedy. I read books on playwriting and screenplay writing and bought a screenplay software program. I wrote an 800 page screenplay (insane, I know!). I also subscribed to Writer’s Digest, which I found to be a great resource for new writers.

Once back in work, I went to Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland in the evenings to take screenplay writing courses. I showed them my screenplay. They laughed and said it needed to be 120 pages not 800 - what are you thinking! So I read up on screenplay writing and kept on going. I learned much from this experience and met a lot of nice people—I also learned to write dialogue, which I believe helps enormously in novel writing. I read A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch, as it was pointed out in one of my instruction books that she was a master at dialogue—and she was. I don’t know if you enjoy reading dialogue, I certainly do. I like to look at a page and see lots of white space. I think dialogue defines the characters and brings them alive. The Airshipmen is driven by dialogue.

I set up a room in my basement next to our washer and dryer. Yes, à la Steven King—but he was in a trailer! I should aspire to his writing genius. Maybe I needed to move into a trailer.

Next, I got lots of front pages from 1920’s British newspapers pertaining to the story and plastered them around the walls along with photos of real life characters involved in these events. I also bought a desktop computer and a Mavis Beacon teach yourself-to-type program. That was great. I enjoyed it and it really worked for an old man. This helped with typing the 1000 pages of research and my silly giant screenplay. I was happy—this was what I’d always wanted to do! To cap it off, I set up a great sound system with headphones and listened to inspiring music while I worked (from 1920’s Charleston/flapper music to Depeche Mode to Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits).

Introduction to the History Book Club Group

My name is David and I’m fascinated by history and how simple, human emotions and foibles, as well as downright evil traits, can shape significant world events. I especially love historical pieces which expose real life experiences between ancient times and the recent days of World War II. I find it interesting that, in essence, people of those times were exactly the same as we are today.
I was born in England and grew up post-war London. One of my earliest recollections was standing in our little garden watching the skies for Hitler’s bombers and running to my mother proclaiming, “Doodlebug coming, Mum, doodlebug coming!” (which of course, there wasn’t, thank God). Yes, even at age four, I had been warned by my wonderful and beautiful mother to keep an eye and an ear out for doodlebugs (V2 rockets). After the war, my playgrounds were bombed-out ruins of houses and gardens around Brixton, which we thought of as fun places, at the time.
My hobbies and interests over the years have included flying, sailing, cooking, reading, writing, horses, movies, politics, historical research and the paranormal. All of these things seem to end up in my writing!
My consuming interest for the past 25 years has been the research of the British Empire, World War One and Two, as well as the development of the great airships of the 1920’s. I was captivated by that subject, not so much from the technical or engineering standpoint, but by the intertwined stories of the men and women and their families of all classes, (as well as the politicians) who lived through those experiences. Tough times, indeed!
My favorite authors include: Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, Erik Larson, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John Fowles, Nevil Shute, Khaled Hosseini and Paula McLain.
I have worked and traveled in Great Britain, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Caribbean, the USA, Spain, France, and briefly, the Middle East.

About Nevil Shute

Lou Remington, the main character and witness to the whole airship saga in The Airshipmen, is entirely fictional. He was born in Great Falls, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. and raised mostly there on his grandmother’s farm. At the age of 16, he escaped his overbearing father by joining the Marines. He served in World War I in France, narrowly escaping death more than once. He came home and promptly joined the Navy in order to fly airships - ‘the next big thing’.

After a terrible accident while working abroad and falling in love with a beautiful English girl, he decided to remain in England and settle down. Later, he became involved in the British Airship Program, where he befriended Nevil Shute. These two characters play off one another with Lou, the droll American, always ready with a quip for the nerdy Englishman in his Harris Tweed jacket. The juxtaposition of them was pleasurable to write, since I have had similar experiences as a Brit in America and my children being Americans in England.

Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer who worked on the great British Airship R100, which I refer to as the Howden R100. After Barnes Wallis moved on to design aeroplanes, Shute was left in charge of that ship’s completion, under the auspices of the government team at Cardington in Bedfordshire. Shute’s full name was Nevil Shute Norway, but he dropped his surname when he began publishing novels in order to protect his identity as an engineer. He became the most popular author in the world for a time with some of his twenty-four novels being made into films, such as A Town Like Alice, No Highway and On the Beach (which starred Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire). Many of his themes embraced the paranormal, psychic phenomena and reincarnation, subjects that have always fascinated me and which I have brought into The Airshipmen.

Shute was an interesting character who, as a boy, actually found himself standing on the street in Dublin near the post office when the Irish rebelled against British troops during the Easter Rising. His father was the postmaster at that time, sent from England as an administrator. Shute helped care for the injured that day, working as a stretcher bearer.

He had a bad stutter and was treated badly at school, not only by his fellow students but by the teaching staff as well. Consequently, he used to play hooky, taking the train to the British Museum, where he spent much of his time—not altogether wasted as it turned out!

Shute lost his brother in WWI and, like most other kids of that era, thought it inevitable that he would be sent off at eighteen to the Front to be slaughtered. As it turned out, he was not sent and survived the war to go on to Oxford. After working for de Havilland Aircraft Company, he was selected by Barnes Wallis to assist in the design of R100 as Chief Mathematician. Later, he went on to form his own small aircraft company. One of the company’s designs was used as a trainer for RAF pilots preparing for WW II, with more than 8,000 being produced. He kept up with his writing and after getting sick of being overtaxed by the government, moved to Australia where his writing career flourished and he was able to keep most of his own money.

I hope that I have portrayed Nevil Shute well. I think of him as clever, courageous and loveable—a charming man who could be witty. I believe, overall, he would have been happy with my take on him—I hope so. In fact, there were times I felt he may have been looking over my shoulder!

Message from a new Goodreads Writer

July 9, 2016
I am new to blogging, so I apologize if it shows. I just wanted to thank all those who signed up for the giveaway and those who have become ‘followers’. I am very honored indeed. I plan to write a blog in the future that might be helpful to others who want to write. I have always wanted to, but like everyone in the position of working and bringing up a family, there was no time—and when I think about it—I didn’t have the experience of life I needed. Some writers are gifted from an early age and whatever they write is wonderful. One thing I will say though is, this has been an exhilarating experience, researching, writing, attending writing school and workshops for screenplay writing and novel writing, learning how to write query letters, beating on the doors of Hollywood, beating on the doors of hundreds of agents, learning how to edit and format, learning how to market (an addictive part of the trip!). All I can say is follow Winston Churchill’s advice—‘Never give up!’ If you do get started on that book, I can promise you, you will meet a lot of nice people along the way—I did. Thank you once again, especially those who have written nice reviews!