Les Edgerton's Blog, page 25

Dead End Follies: Book Review : Les Edgerton - The Genuine, Imitatio...

Dead End Follies: Book Review : Les Edgerton - The Genuine, Imitatio...: Pre-Order THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING here (available on September 30, 2014) (also reviewed) Order JUST LIKE THAT here...

THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER!

Hi Folks,

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that you can now preorder the ebook version of THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING! I'm really, really excited about this! Trade paperback isn't yet available for preorder sales, but should be shortly.

This is my favorite all-time book to have written. In fact, I'm writing a sequel to it right now just because I like these characters so much and they have a lot more trouble to get into.

Being able to offer prepublication sales on Amazon is a truly big deal for smaller, independent publishers. It presents an opportunity to compete with the "big boys" on a much more level playing field. I'm hoping that a lot of folks preorder because what happens on the official day of publication is that all the prepub sales are calculated at that time and what that means is that the book begins with a number of sales--hopefully a significant number!--which means it will open on top or close to the top of the best seller lists. And that, leads to even more significant sales, as it gives the novel a lot more publicity out of the gate.

(Official release date is September 30)

I feel this is a laugh-out-loud book and the early blurbs it's getting from respected writers are showing they feel the same way also. Here's some of the blurbs we've been graciously given for it:




“The most unrepentantly funny crime caper you’ll ever find between the pages of a book. Elmore Leonard, eat your heart out!” —Maegan Beaumont, author of Carved in Darkness
“Les Edgerton serves up a gumbo of sexual deviants, small time hustlers, and serious criminals in a caper that reads like a deranged Damon Runyon tale relocated from Broadway to the French Quarter. The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapingis not for the faint of heart, and that’s just one of its selling points. If you like crime fiction that cracks wise while offering a peek into the darker recesses, this is the book for you.” —Bill Fitzhugh, author of the best-selling novel Pest Control and The Exterminators
“What makes this wild, wild tale so intriguing is the sense that it must be drawing on first-hand knowledge. Edgerton’s sympathetic tough guy narrator gives you an authentic-feeling glimpse into the unique logic of small time hustlers and born losers, with echoes of Ring Lardner and snatches of slam poetry frequently catching you by surprise and making it that much more enjoyable.” —Matthew Louis, founding editor of Gutter Books and author of The Wrong Man and Collision Cocktail
“Masquerading as a novel, Les Edgerton’s newest gem—The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping—is really a debauched weekend in steamy New Orleans, loaded with alcohol, drugs, whores, pistols, and a menacing bookie, all available for your personal and private entertainment between the covers. Narrator Pete Halliday—ex-con, gambler, boozer, ex-baseball pitcher and unwise wiseass—takes us places most don’t really want to go, only to have the time of our lives when we get there. Listen to him: ‘Coming into New Orleans, you could smell it. First day out of jail after thirty days, you could really smell it. Hot and sexy, a couple hundred thousand red hot little mamas, stepping out of steamy baths and showers, their skin sticky from the heat, getting ready for Saturday night...’ Every pitch Pete throws is a hair-raising thrill, a belly laugh or a clue to the wicked and violent puzzle that hangs over his New Orleans adventure. You know someone has to die.” —Jack Getze, Fiction Editor, Spinetingler Magazine
“The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping is a dark crime comedy that will have you laughing from page one. It crackles with manic energy and mad thrills. If you’re looking for a different kind of edgy crime novel, this is the one to grab.” —Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes Mysteries
“There are two certainties when reading anything written by Les Edgerton. First you’ll get gritty, hard hitting noir straight out the top drawer that’ll leave you punch drunk on the floor. Second is it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever picked up before. The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping is no exception. Expect the unexpected. Read it, love it.” —Keith Nixon, author of The Fix
“There’s nothing fake about The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping. Les Edgerton’s latest book is the real deal, and has everything to keep you turning the pages. It’s a caper, full of fun and high-jinx, but it’s also bitter-sweet, engendering a full range of emotions. You’ll smile, you’ll wince, you’ll laugh out loud, and sometimes you’ll even cringe, but you’ll come away from the read feeling thoroughly satisfied and entertained. A terrific read.” —Matt Hilton, author of the best-selling Joe Hunterthrillers
“When it comes to writing crime stories, Les Edgerton can do pretty much it all, and The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping finds him in a mood to have fun. This book is like a raucous party for crime fiction lovers, complete with goons, guns, and schemes-within-schemes. Best of all, the comic voice of its ne’er-do-well narrator is a pleasure from start to finish.” —Jake Hinkson, author of Hell On Church Street and The Posthumous Man
“You’re in for some twisted laughs as one of crime fiction’s most authentic voices takes on dark humor. In The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping, Les Edgerton finds every line that oughtn’t be crossed and drags his characters back and forth ’til it’s blurred. You may want to reach in and give his criminal hero a shake, except you’re bound to be aching to see what kind of trouble he can create next. Humor is human, the blacker the better, and Edgerton serves it up nasty and raw!” —Rob Brunet, author of Stinking Rich
“The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping is like the fever-dream of a two-bit conman who fancies himself a criminal genius. Add in some seedy and saucy New Orleans locales and you’ve got a gumbo of freaky sex, covert mob men and botched amputations. This the most havoc ever wrought in one man’s quest for a measly ol’ po’ boy shop, and a creole crime caper you won’t want to miss.” —Nik Korpon, author of Fait Ave and Stay God, Sweet Angel
“Imagine Les Edgerton’s writing. Dark, despairing noir. Habitual criminals. Rapists. This is nothing like that. : Edgerton takes a break from The Bitch and The Rapist to exercise his inner Westlake. A ‘no holds barred’ and ‘What else can go wrong’ caper with even more laughs than plot twists. The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping has a plot John Dortmunder would have trouble negotiating, and Edgerton milks it for all it’s worth. Not for the faint of heart, the crime that really sets the story off involved kidnapping a gangster—no, I can’t do it. I don’t want to spoil even that much. Suffice to say kidnapping, sexual fetishes, forced amputation, Tourette’s syndrome, certain death, and one-way tickets to Skagway, AK are all played for laughs, and he pulls it off. Big fun. My daughter described the movie Ted as “Really funny and wildly inappropriate.” It’s like that. —Dana King, author Grind Joint and A Small Sacrifice
“The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping is a steamy caper novel that reads like an arm wrestling match between Ring Lardner and Quentin Tarantino, while James Lee Burke takes bets on the outcome. I only stopped laughing to flinch occasionally. A terrific novel, for the strong of heart—and funny bone.”—Warren Moore III, author Broken Glass Waltzes

“A hard-driving, relentless story with grab-you-by-the-throat characters.”—Grant Blackwood, New York Times bestselling author
“There is nothing quite like reading a Les Edgerton novel. His voice crackles with a lifelike intensity. The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping is the most incredible, entertaining and detailed bar story you've ever heard. Reading it, you can't shake that feeling that you've living a special, unique moment where anything is possible, like that night at the bar.”—Benoît Lelièvre, www.deadendfollies.com

  I am totally stoked by the early opinions of writers I hugely respect.

Anyway, infomercial over... please click on the cover photo if you want to place a preorder. And, if you want to wait for the trade paperbook version, just keep checking with Amazon until it appears which it should, shortly. It's a really attractive cover that I think you'll be proud to be seen with on the subway...

Thanks, folks!

Blue skies,
Les

OPENINGS IN OUR NEXT ONLINE CLASS

Hi folks,
As most of you know, I run an online novel writing class that runs for ten weeks at a time and is in operation year-round. We’re coming up to the end of the current session in a couple of weeks, and then will take a couple of weeks off and then begin the next session. Usually, we don’t have openings for new class members, but it looks as if we’re going to have a couple of openings this time, so I just want to let folks know in case anyone’s interested. If you are, please send me an email at butchedgerton@comcast.netand let me know. Below, I’ll give an outline of how it works. When new openings occur, first chance to join is given to the auditors and after that it’s a first-come, first-served basis. To be able to devote the proper time to each student, the class will be limited to ten people. An unlimited number of auditors are taken.


AuditorsThose interested in auditing the class—which would allow the auditing person to receive and view everything the rest of the class does, but not be able to participate actively, solely as an observer. The fee is substantially less for auditors than participating students. Basically, auditors will sit in on the class as an observer. There can be an unlimited number of auditors. Some writers are uncomfortable with very many observing their work and our exchanges as, to be honest, many of our comments are brutally frank. Students know and welcome this, but to someone not directly participating can see it another way. There won’t be any interaction at all with auditors—they’ll be there simply to use the knowledge they might pick up for their own writing or even their own teaching.
Pertinent info for active class members:This class will be conducted in a workshop format. What that means is each week participants will send a designated number of pages to both me and the other members of the class. When I receive each person’s work, I’ll provide comments/criticism/suggestions to improve for each student on their work and then send it back to them and the others in class. Each person in class does the same for each other—reading and providing comments on each other’s work and sending that back to the class and me. It’s exactly like being in an “on-ground” workshop. I’ve found over a lifetime of teaching classes—beginning with the UCLA Writer’s Program—that this is the single best method of learning. There is a synergy at work with this model. Many writing classes consist of the student sending work in and the instructor commenting. That’s okay, in a limited way, but when you have ten others plus the instructor or workshop leader commenting, the value of the class increases almost exponentially.
I believe in road maps when embarking on the lengthy journey a novel entails; therefore, I ask each student to submit a 15-20 word outline of their proposed novel. I don’t have the space here to explain how that works, but I send a handout on how to create such an outline before the class begins, and it serves to keep the writer focused on their novel throughout its creation and also helps the workshop leader and his classmates see instantly if the writer is focused or meandering. I’m a firm believer in beginning a novel in the proper place and once that is achieved, the remainder of the novel becomes infinitely easier to create. We’ll spend the most time on a writer’s novel beginning than any other part of their novel.
This class will be composed of students who’ve previously taken classes with me along with newcomers. To be able to serve each level of student fairly, students who are well along into their novel and have taken previous classes, will be able to submit up to eight pages per week. New students who haven’t taken my class, will be allowed to submit up to five pages per week until they’ve achieved a publishable opening, and, once they’ve achieved a proper beginning, will then be able to send eight pages each week thereafter. Please know that this may sound like favoritism, but it’s not at all. The beginning of a novel is the single most crucial part of writing a novel, imo, and I spend more time on that than anything else. I’ve learned over many years, that a great many writers have a poor understanding of a novel’s structure and it’s crucial that a sound knowledge of novel structure (particularly beginnings) be achieved before devoting much time to the rest of the novel. I’ll spend much more time on the newer student’s five pages than I will on the more experienced writer’s. Please feel free to query those in class who’ve been with me before as to their opinion and I feel certain they’ll agree with me. I’ll be happy to furnish names and email addresses for those writers should you wish to ask their opinion.
Periodically, I also send handouts to the class on some element of writing, as well as other pertinent info that’s useful.
Be forewarned that this workshop isn’t for the faint of heart! Some have termed it “Les Edgerton’s Bootcamp for Writers.” In “real life” I’m not a mean person, but with writing I’m not going to hold hands nor hand out false praise. That’s what most local writing groups are for and they do it well. I expect each person to participate fully and comment on each other’s work just as they would want others to do the same for theirs. I don’t tolerate very well, those who keep making the same mistakes week after week. For example, the proper and professional format is explained at the beginning and each class there are always one or two newcomers who keep making the same, easily-fixed mistake. Here’s a common example: One of the format rules is that there is only one space between sentences in computer-generated material. Many older writers, in the typewriter days of yore, were taught to use two spaces. The kernaling in computers is different than typewriters and using two spaces is a sure sign of an amateur who hasn’t kept up with current usages and just another red flag a writer ought to avoid. I understand it’s a hard habit to overcome—I had to do the same myself—but there is an easy way to relearn this which we give, and even if it takes awhile to relearn this, a writer can at least do a final edit before sending work in and correct this. To not do so, indicates to me a writer who doesn’t respect either themselves or their fellow writers or the teacher. Frankly, I don’t want to waste time with this type of writer. I’m not speaking of the writer who makes occasional mistakes, but of the one who continually keeps making the same mistake after it’s been pointed out.
Writing well isn’t easy. It’s hard. If someone has told you that writing is easy, they’ve lied to you. Typing is easy; writing is hard. Our aim in our class is to help writers create publishable work. By reputable publishers, not vanity presses.
If I haven’t scared you off, here are the particulars:
1. Fee is $400, payable in advance and nonrefundable. Auditor’s fee is $50 and is also nonrefundable.
2. Each week, you’ll send to the entire group and me, your pages. You’ll also receive work from your classmates to read and provide comments on. The comments aren’t intended to be scholarly or exhibit some high degree of technical knowledge. We just want to know what worked for you in the person's writing and what didn’t and why.
3. To help make the class run smoothly, there will be deadlines each week. For instance, if the class begins on a Monday each week, you’ll send in your work by the following Wednesday. Then, starting on Thursday, you’ll send in your comments on each other’s work. I’ll send my comments to each of you by Saturday night. Then, the next week begins on the following Monday.
4. Often, the class and I kind of hit a wall. It’s pretty intense. To account for that event, we may take a week hiatus and return the following week. In fact, you can pretty well count on that.
5. We don’t expect a student to be a professional writer at all. It’s a class, not an advanced degree program. Our aim is to help each writer become better at their craft as a result of the class, and to learn how to professionally submit material, and to hopefully end up creating work that is publishable legitimately.
6. While I would never say I would recommend students to agents or publishers, very often I do. The people who finish the class almost always have progressed to the point where their work is, indeed, publishable, and when that happens I’m eager to introduce them and recommend their work to gatekeepers.
7. Required reading will be my book, HOOKED, and Jack Bickham’s book, SCENES & STRUCTURE. Recommended reading will be Janet Burroway’s WRITING FICTION.
If anyone is interested and has more questions, please feel free to email me at butchedgerton@comcast.net.
Thank you,
Les
P.S. Some additional info…
We’ll have a couple of new students this time—most writers keep re-upping each time but occasionally one or two will drop out for various reasons: demands of a new job not allowing them to commit the considerable time that is required to participate, needing time off to address the notes their new agent just gave them for the novel he signed, and so on. Most just keep on, even after they’ve gotten an agent and/or sold their novel, and begin writing a new one. Almost all who stick out the entire session come back. The ones who quit usually quit fairly soon into the class. It’s not for everyone. Nobody holds anybody’s hand and every single one of us is focused on but one thing—helping each other write a novel that’s publishable. It’s a tough game and not for everyone.
I try to warn people who are thinking of joining us, how tough the class is, but I know from past experience that even so forewarned, at least some are going to be in for a shock when they see that we really don’t hold hands, pat people on the back for minimum efforts, or overlook writing that doesn’t work. I’m not cruel (at least I don’t think so) nor are any of the oldtimers in class, but most new folks haven’t been exposed to a class like ours. The truth is, most writers who haven’t had a class like ours has been praised in other classes or most likely, has been in classes that use the “sandwich” method of teaching. You know—that deal where the teach applies a bit of praise, then a bit of criticism, and then a bit of praise. Well, that ain’t our shtick. Not even close. The comments we all provide on everyone’s work fit one definition only. They’re honest.
This isn’t to be mean or to act like we’re the only folks around who know what good writing is. Except… we do. I’m not aware of any other class out there with the kind of track record ours enjoys. Virtually every writer who stays the course with us ends up with a top agent and/or a book deal. That doesn’t happen in a single ten-week session. About the earliest anyone has earned an agent or book deal in our class has been about a year. And, that’s reasonable.
The thing is, our writers don’t expect things to be easy.
Here are a few comments by students:
Hi ________. Since Les opened the floor for comments from the "class veterans" I'm chipping in with my two cents. I have a file cabinet filled with stuff I sent Les and then needed asbestos gloves to take the paper off the printer. When I started this journey, I'd never taken an English class past high school. (I was pre-med in college) I figured I love to read, so how hard can it be? Okay, quit laughing at me. Clearly, when I wrote my first version of my first novel, I had no idea about story structure, POV, any of that. I figured I'm pretty articulate and therefore I can write?
Les quickly set me straight. All of this is to point out that we've all been on the receiving end of Les' brutal honesty. I will find some of the comments he made on my work and post them but phrases like "throwing up in my mouth now" and "bury this so deep in the yard no one ever finds it" are seared into my brain and I don't have to look to find those!!! The point is, I took other classes before I met Les and the teachers were kind and gentle and never told me I sucked. If it weren't for Les, I'd still be churning out awful drivel that makes people want to throw up instead of trying not to throw up while I wait to see if my agent is able to sell my book. I would never have gotten an agent without Les. So hang in there. Listen to everything he says and if it doesn't make sense, ask away.
...and...
The novel that I am currently trying to sell has been a work in progress since 2009. The first time Les saw it he sent it back and told me to re-write the WHOLE thing!!! My character was a wimp. She sat back and let things happen to her. I argued a little, rewrote a little and then moved on to another book. After a year, I went back and reread it and saw the truth. It was awful. So I took a deep breath and started over. Page one. First sentence. Re-wrote the entire thing. It took a full year and then I revised it again. It's definitely a process. But once you get the Inciting incident and the outline steps down pat, it's a whole lot easier. Trust me!!! And you'll never graduate completely. A few months ago, Les and I went head-to-head on one single passage. I was trying to be lazy and take the easy way out. He called me on it and I resubmitted three or four weeks in a row, revisions on the same passage. I was sure my classmates were so sick of it they were going to stick needles in their eyes rather than read it again! But in the end, the passage rocked!! So hang in there!!!! It'll get better.
That’s all, folks…
Some of the class at Federal Pizza in Scottsdale.



 Two of Maegan Beaumont's novels written in class. Maegan is now our administrator for the class.

A truly great man has passed...

Hi folks,
The world has lost a great entertainer and a wholly original genius. Robin Williams was without peer.
I never had the good fortune to meet him personally, but I felt I almost knew him because of the dozens of stories my friend Lisa Lieberman Doctor told me about him. Lisa was the person he chose to head up his production company, Blue Wolf Productions, and she acquired dozens of scripts for him, including MRS. DOUBTFIRE. In fact, one of the first stories she told me about him was how they acquired that product.
Lisa Lieberman Doctor


Lisa said that she turned down the script. It just wasn’t that well-written, in her opinion. However, Robin chose to override her rejection of it—which he could because he was… well, the boss… It wasn’t the script he liked, Lisa said, but the concept. She told me that scarcely any of the original script made it to the screen. She said Robin improvised virtually all of it.
She told me a funny story that happened on the first day of principle photography on the set of MRS. DOUBTFIRE. When the cameras begin rolling, large sums of money are being expended, and it’s extremely important nothing slow up the shooting.
Well, Lisa said, everyone on the set was worried when Robin didn’t appear immediately. True, it took several hours to get him into costume and one of the main problems was that Robin was an extremely hirsute man. She said he had hair everywhere and for the scenes he appeared as Mrs. Doubtfire, it took several hours to remove the hair from his shoulders, back, arms, legs… everywhere. His beard was particularly tough and extremely difficult to render smooth.
Anyway, the tension was rising as he failed to appear on the set, everyone getting more and more nervous, and then, all of a sudden, he was in Lisa’s office, in full costume, and with a stricken look on his face. “Lisa,” he said, “I’m supposed to go on camera right now but I’ve got a big problem.” “What?” she said, imagining all kinds of horrible scenarios. “Well,” Robin said. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to go on… and I’ve got a woody.”
Now, Lisa is a tiny Jewish woman and I could just imagine her looking up at this large man, dressed in a dress, and lifting her hands helplessly, and saying, “Uh…what exactly do you want me to do, Robin?” And then he laughed and all the tension went out of the room, and the first day of principle photography went well.


Over the years of our friendship, Lisa has told me literally dozens and dozens of stories about Robin. Nearly every one of them made me laugh. Some made me sad. All were stories that couldn’t be told about any other person. Robin Williams was truly a genius, truly a Renaissance man. A true original and a national treasure.
He’ll be sorely missed.
Blue skies,Les

COVER REVEAL AND ON OUTLINING

Hi folks,Today, fellow writer Ransom Noble posted an article on outlining in her blog and she graciously mentioned my method. Since I last posted it in 2010, I thought perhaps it might be time for a rerun. Also, I have some exciting news--I have a cover for my newest novel, THE GENUINE, IMITATION, PLASTIC KIDNAPPING coming out in October from Down&Out Books. You'll see it at the end of this article. Hope you like it and hope you'll buy the book when it comes out! 
OUTLINING A STORY

Anyone on this blog whom I’ve taught will recognize the following. It’s always the first lesson I give in both online and “on-ground” creative writing classes. I decided to post this because recently, on another forum, I’ve been seeing a lot of conversations based on outlining. What I’ve observed from their remarks is that the great majority have only experienced one kind of outline—that old composition thing with the Roman numerals that go on for pages… What I’m going to show here is a very different kind of outline. One that makes sense. Is infinitely simpler and actually works.
Let’s cover some history first…
Like a lot of writers, I wasted a lot of time in my writing career simply because I ignored what is probably the biggest "secret" in creating short stories and novels. I didn't outline.
Outlines were a particular type of hell English teachers visited upon you - those horrid things with Roman numerals and topics and subtopics and all that junk. Yuch! Outlining took all the fun out of reading a book.
I also read interviews with writers who said they never outlined. It would destroy their "creativity" many claimed. The way to write a story was to create a character, start them out in trouble and kind of follow them around as they had neat adventures. What it took years to realize was that my characters had great adventures and it was kind of fun following them around...until somewhere between pages eight and twenty when they would peter out. I had a drawerful of some of the best starts of stories you ever saw. Problem was, they never went anywhere. And most of them never came close to an ending. Oh, a few did, the really short ones. There were even one or two that came to a respectable length...after rewriting them twenty times.
What I didn't realize for the longest time was that writing involves the processing and integration of large blocks of trivial bits of information. As the length of my stories grew, so did the complexity. All of a sudden, I was on page thirteen and I suddenly remembered I couldn't have my character chase the bad guy...because on page two I'd given him bronchial asthma. I had to go back and "cure" him. What I didn't realize was something pretty obvious. A story, like the life it represents, is basically complex. Stories aren't built like a line of dominoes, it more resembles a web, and when you tug a bit harder on one of its many strands, the whole business vibrates. And changes shape. Not only did I have to remember the many details and their connections, I had to keep them in a logical order. Virtually impossible.
I even managed to write several books in this manner. Looking back on those days I cringe. What an awful lot of energy I needlessly wasted!
Here was my typical process. I bet at least some of you have gone through the same procedure. I'd get a great idea, so great that I'd have to drop the baby if I was holding him, and fly to my typewriter. (Remember - this was in the days of yore when they had those ancient artifacts...) As fast as my fingers could fly, I'd write. A hundred words would accumulate. Then, two hundred. Then...well, then I began to run into problems.
Something I did in the first hundred words didn't quite fit with the three hundredth, but I wasn't quite sure what it was. Something was just "off". It would bother and confuse me, but I didn't want to deal with it. So, I'd push on, fix it later, whatever it was. Just get the stuff out, in the white heat of creativity. That's what rewriting was for, right? To fix stuff that didn't fit.
Only now the writing really slowed. The next fifty words were the hardest. I was running out of steam. The idea I'd begun with seemed stale, trite. If I could even remember the original idea. Crap! I'd say, finally, slamming shut the typewriter case. Maybe tomorrow the Muse would redescend...
Hardly ever happened. On the morrow, a new idea would strike, with the same kind of heat as the first one and I'd be off and running with that one.
With the same results.
In no time at all, I had boxes of unfinished stories. Sound familiar?
Well, I learned a trick. I won't go through the whole sorry history of how I wasted time and learned, little by little, to work smarter. What happened, after many centuries (well, it seems like that now) was that I began kind of jotting down a half page of notes. I even began figuring out my endings before I began.
Now I began to finish stories. Not a lot, but a lot more than I had previously. After a couple of years of this, I began to expand my notes. Never once did I think of what I was doing as "outlining." There weren't any Roman numeral. How could that be an outline?
And then...one day I got one of those Joycean epiphanies. What I was doing was an outline! But, these weren't outlines like Missus Grundy had us doing back in P.S. 121. These were just notes. Notes kind of organized. And I discovered something else. Those old writers were liars. Hemingway, Steinbeck and Shakespeare - they all claimed they didn't outline, but they had to. Their stuff all held the kind of integrity that only comes in thinking through a project first before you pick up the saw. They just said they didn't outline. All of a sudden, I knew better. Those guys probably didn't think they outlined either. I doubt if any of them had Roman numerals on their notes either. I'd bet money they had notes, though, and copious notes...and copious notes organized into some kind of system. Before they ever picked up the ol' writing quill and wrote "Chapter One". Probably what a lot of them did was write a first draft...and then used that for their "outline". Without calling it that, of course, or even thinking of it in that way. Hemingway didn’t outline—he had 80,000 word outlines (also called a “first draft). Same thing, just a bit cumbersome and time-consuming to create. I bet that's what they did though. They weren't any different than I was. Or you. If any writer begins their story without knowing precisely where they're going, any mistakes they make at first, any tiny omissions, take on added significance as he or she proceeds. As length grows linearly, complexity expands exponentially. Fact of life. The writinglife anyway.
If one is muleheaded enough, a story can be bulled through without outlining. Even fairly long stories. It's kind of a masochistic exercise though. It may take twenty, even thirty rewrites to get a decent story that way.
Don't ask me how I know this. I'll begin crying. I'll have to. My wife knows I recall experiences like this and keeps all the sharp instruments locked up.
Novels are the worst experience in the world without an outline. After you spend several years learning to juggle thousands of details in your head - you can get pretty good at it - you can write longer and longer material. Except, that no matter how good you get at retaining all this stuff in your head, you'll probably end up stuck on about page ninety. That seems to be the magic length for novels. Not quite long enough by about three hundred pages. Short stories seem to peter out around between pages six to eight.
If you've got an outline you just don't have these problems. Stuck? Glance up at your outline and instantly you'll be reminded where you are in the story and your perspective will return. The dizzy feeling will recede.
Okay. Sales pitch for outlines over. I learned my technique from taking screenplay writing classes. Those guys always outline. That's how they can write scripts so quickly. I took a class in this program with Martin Goldstein and I wrote a 108-page script in two days. And Mr. Goldstein says it's a great script - has attached himself to it as the producer and not only that - this "two-day" script was just named a semifinalist in the Academy Foundation's Nicholl’s Fellowships in Screenwriting awards. Not bad for two days work! I wrote the first 64 pages in about eight hours and the remaining 44 pages in about ten hours. Piece of cake. Of course, I spent about a week and a half on the outline. I do write quickly, so don't use my times as a model. Without an outline, I'd still be writing...
Let's get to these puppies. Here's how you create an outline for your story. Ready?
1. You make notes to yourself as you imagine the story played out.2. You arrange those notes.3. As the writing proceeds, you refer to them.That's it. Or so I thought at the time. It was a lot easier than what I used to do, but there was still something I was to learn.
I got lucky. I happened on a book that really opened my eyes as far as outlines. I honestly can’t remember the book—I’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of books, literally—and I wish I could so I could give the author his proper credit (I do remember it was a man), but he gave me the best outlining tool I’ve ever come across. It’s nothing at all like those ten-pound puppies with the Roman numerals as you’ll see.
The outline I propose you try that I took from this guy’s book on writing consists of five simple statements that describe the major actions through which the story will be told. One statement for each major focus. And each statement will be short, consisting only of two to three words. A human noun, a strong, concrete action verb, and (most of the time) a direct object. (We won't count articles such as "a", "an", and "the" as words.) The simpler an outline is the more it focuses on the important relationships in your story. Words actually count for more in an outline than in the story. An outline like I'm proposing should have no more than fifteen to twenty words in it. Twenty words max for a 400-page novel. In a story, the almost-right word can sometimes suffice, but in an outline, it has to be the perfect word. Another difference between this version of an outline and the ones Missus Grundy had you do is that the statements in her outlines represented topic sentences and as such specify what comes at the beginning of the section they represent. That's because in logical writing, the writer states her premise first and then develops it.
In dramatic stories, however, the dramatic action that makes your point comes at the end of each section - where climaxes belong. What this means is that your outline statements represent endings, not beginnings. This is an important point to keep in mind. This is ultra-important to grasp. I’ll say it again: Your outline statements represent endings, not beginnings. I think this is why we hate those old Comp I kinds of outlines. It doesn’t allow any room for creativity at all. This does.
In almost all novels, there are three major movements involved as the protagonist struggles to resolve his or her problem. There are dozens—maybe even hundreds—of smaller movements, but by and large, there are almost always three major movements or crucial points. That’s what this kind of outline will show. First, the inciting incident that kicks off the story. Then, the resultof each of the three major movements. Finally, the resolution. Five statements. That’s it. The whole of your novel is contained therein. With enormous freedom within it for those who are afraid their creativity will be stifled…
This is so important to grasping this that I’m going to belabor it a bit. Each statement represents the result of the major action taken to resolve the problem. Not the  beginning and development of the action. Major difference and for those that don’t get this, it’s always because they haven’t shifted their thinking and definition of outlines from those old comp definitions and models. Again, it represents the outcome of the major action. How you as the author get to that outcome is totally up to you. It gives you complete creative freedom. Look at it as the same thing as driving from New York to Los Angeles. You know that’s your goal. Get to L.A. There are a thousand ways to do that. You might drive down and go through Arizona. You might go north and go through part of Canada. You might zig-zag northwest and southwest the whole way. You might go directly west in a straight line. What’s important is that you end up in L.A., right? That’s what this kind of outline does. It gives you your outcome (arriving in L.A.), but it allows you complete freedom in how you get there. I know I keep repeating this, but I also know from experience how ingrained those godawful comp I outlines are in our brains, that it’s important that you grasp the difference.
I'm going to use my own story I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger in my collection titled "Monday's Meal" to illustrate a typical outline. The first statement will be:
Complication or inciting incident :Debt endangers Pete (This is the complication that provides the occasion for the story. Every story must have an inciting incident to kick-start it. Something must happen that changes the protagonist's world and by doing so, creates a problem/goal. This is where stories must begin - not with setting or backstory. Act I, as it were.)
Development: (This is the second part of the outline. The development steps that lead to the resolution. Act II, as it were, following Aristotle's Poetics)1.Tommy cons Pete into a kidnapping2. Pete and Tommy botch kidnapping3. Pete escapes
Resolution: (This is the third and final step. Act III.)Pete pays for mistake
Here’s the outline without the extraneous material:
Debt endangers Pete.Tommy cons Pete into a kidnappingPete and Tommy botch the kidnappingPete pays for mistake.
I used this for the 18-page  short story that appeared first in The South Carolina Review and then I wrote a 92,000 word novel… using the same exact outline. Worked perfectly for both of them. Oh, yeah. I also wrote a screenplay for this that was a finalist in both the Writer’s Guild and Best of Austin screenplay competitons… and guess what? You guessed it. I used the same exact outline and it worked perfectly. There are major differences in all three versions, but the central story remained the same and was a practical instrument in all three forms. It works!
This came to seventeen words, two over the optimim. If you're under twenty, you're fine. Once I have this outline, the rest is just filling in the blanks. But, everything in the story must contribute to the outline. I can't, for instance, start talking about Pete's childhood in New Orleans, for example. Not unless it contributes to the situation he's in.
Now. Look at the elements. There's each of the three things I said should be in the outline. A human noun, a strong, concrete action verb, and a direct object. I didn't, for instance, say "Pete is in debt" for my complication. Why? Because is is a static verb. Always think in straightforward active terms.
You might also notice I didn't have a happy-sappy "Hollywood" ending. Those don't work in literature. They work (I guess) in direct-to-video movies (and more than a few that we see at the theater) and in supermarket novels, but not in quality fiction, and that's what we're interested in here, I assume.
Doesn't look much like Missus Grundy's Roman numeral outline, does it? But, if you read the story and then compare it to the outline, you'll see it's all there. And it allows for you to roam and be creative within the story. You just have to remain within the strictures of the outline. But, there's a heck of a lot of freedom there!
Let’s look at just one of those statements, the first one. Tommy cons Pete into a kidnapping. In the short story, titled I Shoulda Seen a Credit Arranger, this action took about four pages. Tommy comes into a bar where Pete’s hustling pool, draws him away from the huckleberry he’s hustling to another bar, where he lays out the scam, to kidnap the head of the Cajun Mafia and amputate his hand and hold that for ransom. That was how I got to the outcome of the outlined point.
Then, in the novel, it took about 80 pages to get to the same point. I had more room with the novel. In the novel, Pete still has the same problem—in heavy debt to the Mafia for gambling—and Tommy cons him into the same kidnapping as before. But, this time, to get to that place, there’s some other developments. First, Tommy talks Pete into kidnapping a supermarket manager and holding his wife in their home with Pete guarding her while Tommy and the manager go to his store and clean out his safe. But, before that, the pair realize they don’t have suits and part of the supermarket caper is that they have to go into their nice neighborhood and without suits they’ll stick out. So, because they’re tapped out and neither have a suit, they decide to pick up operating capital (to buy suits with) by robbing a streetcar. Which goes horribly wrong. Now, because of a surveillance camera on the streetcar, their pictures are everywhere on TV and the stakes are really ratcheted up. Besides escaping the Mob, they now have to worry about the law. Finally, they do kidnap the head of the Cajun Mafia and remove his hand. See what I mean about the freedom this kind of outline allows? Enormous freedom. They still get to the kidnapping, but this time, instead of driving straight through, they go way down south to Arizona before they wend back up northwest to L.A. Same outline, same outcome, different way to get there.
In the screenplay, they don’t get to the kidnapping until about page 45. And, some other things happen there that didn’t in the short story or novel. But… they still end up in L.A. Can you see how this kind of outline gives you a roadmap as well as complete freedom? It really, really does. It’s why when I see as I did in the recent postings of another forum about people spouting off about how they hate outlines, I know they’ve never been exposed to this kind. They’re always thinking about 10-page (or longer!) monstrosities with all those Roman numerals, describing the beginnings and travel route to their scene or plot point goals. I agree. Those are horrible, horrible, mind-numbing and creativity-stifling monsters. This isn’t at all.
What this kind of outline does is force you to think through the story before you write it. You spot problems before you waste two hundred or two thousand (or more) words on them. Suddenly, writing becomes a breeze. It really does.
In the story above, the definition of a story is adhered to. A story consists of a character in trouble - has a need, wants something, etc. A story always begins with the inciting incident - whatever happens to drastically change the protagonist's world and create a problem for him or her (it has to be the biggest problem in his/her life at that point and one the reader will deem worthy enough to follow him in solving it, reaching his/her goal). Pete's in trouble - he owes a lot of money to a nasty bookie. He has to do something about it. He does get tricked by Tommy into an ill-fated kidnapping, but once he's in it, he begins to take his own action. You can have coincidence in a story, but it should never be a coincidence that helps the main character. It can appear at first to do so, but it never really can. It must always hinder the character. And stories are drama, which means you must create scenes, not wander around inside the head of the character, and scenes are by definition, action. There must be dramatic action. Also, a protagonist may be reactive at first, but very quickly he or she must become proactive, acting on his or her own behalf to solve the problem, gain the goal, etc. Reactive characters (characters to whom things "happen" in which they spend their time on stage reacting to those things) are boring and don't belong in good fiction. And lastly, because of an action the protagonist takes, there must come a reversal and a change in the character. What Joyce called an "epiphany". Characters in fiction, must, as a result of the actions of the story, become profoundly changed from the person they were at the beginning of the story. Also, the character can't just think through the problem, although obviously, that can be a part of his epiphany, but it has to be occasioned by an action that he can then process internally. The epiphany also cannot be attained through a conversation with another character. There has to be an actual action which changes him and turns the story. Once that happens, the story is over. Get out. Start a new story. But first create an outline for it. You'll thank yourself.
A logical question is: What if I see a “better” story or way for the character to get from Point A to Point B? Maybe even an entirely different story? No problem. Just change your outline and you still have a roadmap that’s easy to follow and one that give you complete freedom.
The nice thing about this kind of outline is that you save paper. You can write the whole thing on a napkin or even a matchbook cover…
Once you've created an outline of this sort, it's almost impossible to stray in the wrong direction. If you find yourself doing that, just glance at the outline and get back on the right road.
Blue skies,Les
And now--here's my new cover!
 Ain't it cool?!

Just Add Champagne : BOOK REVIEW: The Bitch by Les Edgerton

Just Add Champagne : BOOK REVIEW: The Bitch by Les Edgerton: Ex-con Jake Bishop is several years past his second stint in prison and has completely reformed. He’s married, expecting a child, and pr...

Twelve Mad Men - Official Trailer - It's coming...

Guest Post on Addiction by Mark Matthews

Hi folks,

A writer pal of mine, Mark Matthews, has recently written a post on his blog about addiction and how writers can write about characters who are jonsing realistically, and since there are at least a couple of writers who use such characters in their fiction who gather here (as well as a few people who've been addicted themselves...), I thought it might be beneficial to look at what he has to say.

Here's Mark:



I AM 22 YEARS SOBER TODAY, SO I WROTE A POST CALLED "GETTING YOUR CHARACTER HIGH: WRITING ABOUT ADDICTION"
Around 9:37 am today I am  22 years clean and sober. Yep. 22 years. What the hell is that? Crazy huh. (I’ve blogged on this subject a lot over the years, such as here and here .)  I like to think the hell I put myself through helped me gain the perseverance to run marathons and write books, despite all the forces in the universe trying to stop me.
Substance abuse and addiction play a major role in many of my books. On the Lips of Children features a crystal meth addict living in a drug-smuggling tunnel who snorts bath salts. STRAY is loosely based on my experience working as a therapist in a treatment center.
And my latest release,  MILK-BLOOD , features heroin addiction in a way I am pretty confident you have never seen before.
None of my books preach or try to deny anyone the choice of their drug or drink. Hell, if I could get away with it, I’d be drinking right now. But I can’t. One shot of vodka and I’m drinking for days and then using any substance I can get my hands on. My insides bleed out of my ass (literally). Strange days indeed, and the glory is, writers can make their characters bleed out just the same.
So, for my 22 year sobriety anniversary, I’m putting out a post called:
“Getting Your Character High: Writing About Addiction”Here we go…
Torture your protagonist. Toss them into a pot of boiling water, and make the best parts come bubbling up to the top. There are lots of ways to do this, but one of the greatest and oft-used ways for authors is to write some drugs or drink into their system. Wether they have a longstanding addiction, are in recovery from addiction and relapse, or take their first hit of that strange looking pill, a character under the influence is a pivotal point in many stories. Substances turn a character inside out.  The filters are gone, the emotions are exaggerated, impulse control is low, libido may be ablaze. Memories and demons and actions they will later regret come rushing in.  
Getting your character high is similar to dropping them into that pot of boiling water. Here’s some things to consider:
What You Drop In MattersAll Substances are not equal.  A tiny dot of crystal meth holds much more power than a drop of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the variances are tremendous. I’ve been around drinking in my sobriety without a problem, but I never want to be in the same room as meth again, for if I do not leave, there will be blood. Social marijuana use, social alcohol use, and social crack use: One of these things is not like the other. 
Amounts and TermsGet it right. To make it feel truthful, characters should use the right amount, the right away, with the right terms. “Weed” is the common vernacular for marijuana, right? And Dope doesn’t mean “Weed” in my parts, maybe nowhere. Dope is particular to just heroin.  Of course, if you are writing fantasy or science fiction, this all changes. Spoiled milk got the aliens high in “Alien Nation”, NZT-48 was an intellectual buzz in “Limitless” and Hobbits love their pipe-weed. Oh, the places you will go, just have inner-world consistency, and have some fun.
Research If your character is getting high, or trying not to get high, then go to an open AA/NA meeting.  Find some YouTube videos of people using.  Listen to songs that capture the tone of the specific substance. (RIP Lou Reed).  I’m not saying to go snort some coke, but, go snort some coke. No, don’t’ snort coke. Ask someone who snorted coke to edit your work.  Or of course you could just snort some coke. (No, don’t!)

Rituals
Addicts love rituals. Your character can be on the outside looking in, and intimidated and beguiled by the strange world, or it can be part of their lexicon. Alcoholics love the ding of the bell as they enter the party store, the smell of old mop soap, seeing all those little stogies at the counter. Heroin addicts come to welcome the prick of the needle into their flesh, and the comfort of patting their front pocket and knowing there’s a pack of dope inside. Get this right, and the passages will read true to the reader. 
The scariest moment is always just before you startWhen recovering heroin addict Jane Margolis met Pinkman in Breaking Bad, you knew something had to give. Laying out the temptation and creating the set-up is a great plot builder.  If you can get readers screaming at your characters in their head, "don't do it, don't do it, no! don't!" you've won them over. A character we care about acting against their best interest is reason to read on.
One generic scene I personallyhate is the character trying to stay sober, sitting at a bar stool pondering over unresolvable troubles, and in front of them is the drink they just ordered. They twirl the shot of whiskey and stare, deciding if they should drink it. I can believe a lot of things, but not this. Once you are at that point, you are already drunk. Cravings are intense, and if you’ve gone that far, you’re not going to turn anything down, and certainly not pause. It’s like taking a laxative, and trying not take a shit. You may hold on for a while, but eventually you will give in, and then it will get messy.
But that moment before decisions are made can make the reader's heart stop and their interest zoom in. 
All You Have to do is read the labelsSubstances work with much better consistency than most things in our life.  In fact, the reason drugs are so enticing is that they work. Want to feel a certain way, there’s something out there for you.  Anything your character wants can be found in a drug. Confidence, creativity, strength, expansion of consciousness.  Eventually  the drugs will do the opposite that you hoped for, but while the character is falling into the pits of hell, it can feel like flying.
      "Most people don't know how they're gonna feel from one moment to the next. But a dope fiend has a pretty good idea. All you gotta do is look at the labels on the little bottles”
Perceptions and ProseWhen characters uses substances, perceptions are altered, and this is where your prose should change. First person point of view will certainly change the most, followed by third person limited. The deeper you are in the POV the more affected the prose will be. 
Make the sentences reflect the substance: Drunkards will have big, bold dreams, or violent impulses. Any good drunk is always telling you how much they love you or how much they hate you.  Heroin will make you feel soft and warm, like a return to the womb where everything is beautiful and has its place; the ants in the grass are just doing their thing. Cocaine will have your brain and tongue electric with tangential philosophies. 
Of course, the pain of craving for and detoxing from these substances will have a visceral effect unique to the substances. Making your characters detox and crave is twice as much fun as getting them high. The possibilities are endless, and characters going through the cycle of addiction transform as much as any werewolf.
Thought patterns and Narrator Reliability.Characters getting high will rationalize insanity until their choices seem perfectly reasonable and actually preferable. Their internal dialogue will be filled with lies. What's more fun writing than that?
Similar to this, there’s tons of options to hide an addicts true intent with behavior that may seem contrary to expectations.  Addicts lie, they deny, then they die. 
There’s a great passage in Michele Miller's upcoming novel (and ABNA semi-finalist), Lower Power, where a craving crack cocaine addict can’t find a way to afford any drugs so instead he goes to visit his son. As we travel alongside him, we think this could be a redeeming quality, until he steals the very  necklace he gave his son from around his neck to pawn for crack money. That’s verity. Parents get high everyday by selling back their kids Xbox games to Gamestop so they can get a 5 dollar crack rock.SurroundingsUnlike the pits of hell for murderers and rapists, there are no fences in the pits of hell  for addicts, for if an addict tries to climb out of their pit of hell, another addict grabs them by the ankle and pulls them back down.  Want to put your character around some nastiness and see how they respond, send them to a crack house or a dive bar. It’s a pot of bubbling madness in there, and your character's madness is sure to boil right out of them just the same.
So there’s some thoughts. Not sure if anyone is listening as I look around the table, but that’s okay, this sharing is important for me and I'm grateful for the chance.  I’d love to write a post on how to write someone newly sober since sobriety to me has been stranger than any fiction or any addiction. It took a lot more courage to live stone cold sober 24 hours a day than to clutch onto that 40 ouncer like it’s my baby bottle. 
For a great read on a newly sober person navigating reality filled with some wonderful humor, try “Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety” by Sacha Scoblic.
For a great story on addiction that I think will blow your mind to pieces, check out MILK-BLOOD
$2.99 for kindle $6.65 paperback
Thanks, Mark. Keep collecting those white chips!
Blue skies,Les

BLAST FROM (MY) PAST...

Hi folks,

Just some trivia to share with you. My buddy, Angie Felabom, recently sent me a couple of old clippings she ran across from when she and I and her husband were in college together. This brought back a bunch of memories!





And, yes, I had hair...

Blue skies,
Les

INTERGNAT TROLLS

Today, I happened upon a posting in the comments section of an Amazon review I’d recently given on Dana King’s book GRIND JOINT. It’s by a guy who for some reason doesn’t use his name but goes by “Mr. Wizard”. Normally, I ignore the trolls who seem to populate the Intergnat, but felt I had to say something about this as it challenges my integrity. And, my integrity is important to me, which is one reason I don’t hide behind some chickenshit alias…
Here’s what the Wiz (who lives in Monterrey, California, which explains a lot…) said:
MrWizard says:This perhaps would be a more persuasive review except that the reviewer has posted 44 similar superlatives, none rated less than 5 stars, since 2009. Apparently there's not a book he's read for which he has not had the same exuberant praise.
First, to provide some context, I read an average of three and a half novels per week. Each and every week. That means that since 2009 I’ve read approximately 800 novels. In my house are literally thousands of novels and my Kindle is packed full. I buy novels, but I also receive novels from friends and publishers to read, sometimes to review or blurb. Forty-four reviews for approximately 800 novels read seems about right to me and that’s because of my personal review philosophy.
Which is, I won’t write a review unless I think it truly is worth five stars.
Whether that’s a good philosophy or not is open for debate. It’s just my personal philosophy.
See, I’m a writer, which means I kind of know what goes into writing a novel and then finding an agent and then finding a publisher and then finding readers. It’s hard, boobie. There’s just an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears (and luck!) involved. It’s actually a wonder there are as many books published (legitimately—I’m not talking about self-publishing) as there are.
With my first novel, I suffered 85 rejections. That’s in the pre-Intergnat days when one had to send the mss via snail mail and provide postage not only for sending the work but for the return postage. At a time—for me, anyway—in which we didn’t know where the rent or food money was going to come from, most weeks, and could ill-afford the money spent on postage. And wait weeks and months for a reply. And, when it did find a publisher, it was only because of the advice literary agent Mary Evans gave me and the rare good fortune it had in landing on the desk of a person who wasn’t going to even read it before sticking in the rejection slip, but whose secretary had spilled her coffee and was preparing a new cup and she decided to read a page or two while waiting on her java. Those are the kinds of things that are behind many books that find their way into print. Not to mention I’d spent a year and a half writing and rewriting it…
So, yeah, when I pick up a book, I know I don’t know the history of that book, but I do know that it most likely wasn’t whipped out in a day and a half and there was probably more than a bit of sacrifice behind it.
Sorry, but I’m not going to be the guy who takes a few hours to read it and then slap a two- or three-star rating on it. I just won’t publish a review that I don’t think is deserving of a five-star rating. This guy—Mr. Wizard—seems to be like more than one person among us—he judges others’ lives by his own. I venture a guess that he reads about 44 books in five years and reviews every single one. Which is what he seems to think that I’ve done. Sorry, panther-breath—that’s not even a third of a year’s reading for moi.
In fact, there are a bunch of writers who I know and whose books I’ve read that I haven’t reviewed publicly. Sometimes, that’s because I don’t feel I could honestly give them a five-star review. Not always—often I do think it deserves such a rating, but if I reviewed every single book I read I wouldn’t have much time for reading other books and that’s how I’d rather spend my time. In fact, when I find an author I like, I usually end up reading every single book he or she has published, but I usually only review one book. It’s just a time thing.
There are several writers who’ve asked me to review their books and I read them and told them (in private) that I wouldn’t put my name on it—that it simply wasn’t that good. That’s not something I enjoy doing and I’m pretty sure they didn’t enjoy hearing. But, it’s that integrity thing. And, more than one of them wrote another book and asked me to review it and that book was great and I gave them a review. A five-star review. They’d earned it.
Reviews are a funny animal. My idea of the perfect and best-written book of all time is THE STRANGER by Albert Camus. Recently, I went to Amazon and read a few of the reviews for it. One (well, more than one!) reviewer gave it three stars. Three stars! I looked up this reviewer’s history and saw she’d reviewed books like FIFTY SHADES OF CRAP and James Patterson novels and gave them five stars. That kind of illustrates the literary acumen of some reviewers perfectly. I don’t have any problem with her giving five stars to FIFTY SHADES, but I do kind of have an issue with giving a book of true genius three stars. But then, as my old pappy used to say: “Consider the source.”
Which might have been the trigger for Mr. Wiz’s comments. I kind of dissed those kinds of books in my review of Dana’s book. Perhaps he feels those are examples of good literature… Who knows? The only thing I know is that as a rule, someone who doesn’t have the trouser beans to use his real name behind his comments is what we used to call, in the days before political correctness—a chickenshit. (My apologies to chickens everywhere…)
Am I pissed? Well… yeah. Mostly, I’d just like to meet Mr. Wiz and whiz on him…
Rant over… but one last thing. If I review a book on this blog or anywhere and give it five stars, I’ve not only read a pile of books I didn’t review, but that it absolutely was a five-star read for me.
You can count on it.
Blue skies,Les
P.S. I'm aware that the common wisdom is to simply ignore these kinds of assholes but sometimes they're just so much of a punk that it's hard to. And, I'm not commenting on a bad review he gave me, but to his challenging my integrity, so hope that counts for something.