L. Lane Bailey's Blog, page 20

Changes in the Story

Two weeks ago I posted up two excerpts from “The Call”, an upcoming book I’m working on. It is an update on the Dixon-Prince series that is taking place in the current era. When I posted those excerpts up, Excerpt 1 and Excerpt 2, I have written about 15,000 words of the story (I am usually 80,000-100,000 for a book). Read More

Here I sit, two weeks later and while the basic structure is there, many of the details have changed. I was considering posting up the new excerpts, but decided i...

Want to Write a Book?

I’ll skip to the good parts… You can! I’ll help.

Here is all of the other stuff. Read More

I read a lot. When I switched from reading exclusively paper, to reading on a tablet, I REALLY amped up my reading. Before, I read maybe a book every few months. Then, I kicked it over to a book a month. A few years ago, I decided that I needed to give myself time each day to read, and now I read a book every week or two.

At first, I read a lot of “public domain” books… classics. I coul...

Triple Cross

My most recently published book, as of writing this blog post, is Triple Cross. It hit the virtual shelves in January. Unlike the current Dixon-Prince books, it is contemporary. That presented a few challenges for me writing, as I had been stuck in the 80s and 90s for so long.

One of those was dealing with the covid pandemic, and masks. Honestly, I choseRead More

not to. It makes the story a little less “dateable”, allowing the story to more easily stand on its merits. There were...

Get the News

With the changes in the FaceBook algorithm, now is a GREAT time ot subscribe directly to my blog. This is the first place I post sales, specials and even unpublished excerpts. If you are a subscriber, you won’t miss a beat. Also, you get a bonus, an ebook that is ONLY available to subscribers. Read More

FaceBook changed their algorithm in February to curtail page posts being distributed. So, all of the pages you subscribe to… the posts to those pages are less likely to show up in your f...

Planning Vengeance

It’s been a while since I promo’d Planning Vengeance. That was my first book and is still a favorite. I really like some of the characters… enough that they keep showing up in other books. Read More

In fact, I have 6 different books in various stages of development. Only one of them doesn’t have crossover characters. (all titles are working titles and may or may not reflect actual titles):

Skater – This one is set before Planning Vengeance, and has cameos by Jack Dixon, Nicole Dix...

Excerpt 2 from The Call

I have been working on a new story while I wait for beta reads on The Skater. This new story involves Jack Dixon getting a call he’s not expecting. This is part of the first chapter.

He was lost in the menu when he felt the presence next to him.  He looked up.  Nancy’s blue eyes still glowed, and while there were a few streaks of gray, she still had the same wavy, jet black hair.  He stood up to greet her.  She pulled him into a hug, holding him as tightly as she had the last time they saw ea...

Excerpt from The Call

I have been working on a new story while I wait for beta reads on The Skater. This new story involves Jack Dixon getting a call he’s not expecting. This is part of the first chapter.

Jack was doing something he loved doing, but seldom had the opportunity to do anymore.  He was driving by himself, slapping down the highway miles on a solo road trip.  Partially solo, anyway.  He was driving from Virginia to Florida.  He was going to pick up Amy in Jacksonville, then they were driving togeth...

Getting Vocal

I thought I would give something new a try.

There is a site called Vocal. They publish any type of story, although everything has to go through a human-based screening process… that just means somebody reads it looking for quality and making sure it isn’t hate-speech or some other BS.

The cool part, at least for me, is that they actually pay me for reads. It isn’t much, and my books won’t make their way there, but if I can build a following there, I can use it to draw traffic to my b...

Somebody Hates Me

I don’t even know why…

Last week my site referrals from FaceBook dropped off by 75%. That’s right… I only had a quarter of the traffic from my FaceBook posts as I normally get.

Other sites are not affected. Just FaceBook.

So… either the algorithm decided that it no longer liked me, or Read More

most of my friends and followers on FaceBook did. I’m going with FaceBook. With it being all of a sudden, I can’t imagine there was a meeting of the “We Hate Lane Society” and it was de...

Lucinda’s Choice

Competition sharpens the game.

I wrote Lucinda’s Choice for a short story competition. The quick version of the rules are as follows:

Must include a black notebookThe main character must have an unexpected windfall of $20,000. It can be from any type of source.The story must be between 600 and 2000 words.

This story punches out with just under 2000 words. I don’t want to give too much away, but someone gets $20k, and there is a black notebook.

For the rest of the story, all ...