Roberto Scarlato's Blog, page 22

Wouldn't You Know It

This 8,000 worded thriller, tackled by two authors no less, completely took me by surprise. In reading, that is always a good thing. Not only is the premise fresh, quick and straight to the action; it compels you to read faster.
The story is simple. Your elders always said don't pick up strangers, they may be psycho's. They also said don't get in to any stranger's car. They may be wacko's as well. But what happens when two killers meet, thinking that the other one is their next intended victim. Well, I don't know about you, but I think that makes for a great Hitchcockian thriller and a feast for the avid reader's eyes. And if you know me by know, you very well know that I am hopelessly addicted to reading.
I give this tale a solid five stars for originality, pacing and it's length.
I must also note that I read this short tale on the Amazon Kindle version 3. That's right, T.A.T.T. fans, I have given in. I am now a proud owner of a kindle. And this story, Serial, was the first thing I read on it. Of course, it was free. But the story was worth a good five spot at least. Call it a literary cutting of the ribbon. I'm sure I'll review the functions of the Kindle in the future but, for right now, I'm still tinkering with it. It was a very thoughtful gift from my in-laws.
To put it to good use, I've already collected twenty or so classics to wet my literary appetite. This does not in anyway mean I've stopped reading traditional paperbacks or audiobooks...this just means, depending on my mood, I can carry less bulky tomes while I go for a walk deciding what to read next.
Oh, there is one title I've forgotten to mention which I've added to my Kindle collection of books.
Yes, it's a Stephen King book.
You might say an exclusive novella.
It might be right up ur alley...

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

One thing I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of mysteries. But I do get curious on occasion. Take for example my wife. She's an avid reader like me. She also introduced me to such books as Catcher in The Rye and T is for Trespass. So, when I saw her reading a hefty tome that had just a title and no cover art I asked her what she was reading.
"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.""Is it any good?""I dunno. I bought it cause it was six bucks."
As the nights passed I noticed that she read for longer periods. Sometimes, when we were both reading in the front room, I'd catch her gasp or groan as if she were living in the novel itself. After she was finished, she ran out and bought the next book in the series: The Girl who Played with Fire.
She told me that the first book was intense. I believed it and decided to take the dip. The story revolves around three central characters: An old, retired billionaire who is trying to solve a case over forty years cold, a investigative reporter who is called upon to take on the task and a girl who has a troubled past but mainly keeps to herself. She also works for a security company gathering data on clients and is a hacker.
I won't say that this book CAPTURED me right away until around page 180, when Lisbeth Salander, the hacker girl, convinces me that there's more to her story.
This book, by late author Stieg Larsson, took a while to get going but once it did, hoo, it did not let up. There are a lot of details in the case and a hell of a lot of exposition but that further saturates this book in realism. Compared to the mystery books of today, which are few and far between, this is the first one that really got me interested. It has the sharpness of a Sherlock Holmes book but has the atmosphere of an Agatha Christie novel. Yet it is set in 2007.
Lisbeth may very be the new flawed heroine of our time, she has the draw of Hannibal Lecter where you know she's smart and you know there is more to be said but she keeps a lot of information hidden for her own personal reasons. She is by far, one of the most original characters I've read in a mystery yarn. Do yourself a favor and read this book and find out why a Girl with a Dragon Tattoo would play with fire or kick a Hornet's nest.

Doctor Who?

Fresh from writing a short story last night, I woke up early today to try to branch out and tackle another one. Woke up at close to nine in the morning. But as the morning charged on, my enthusiasm diminished. Blocked again. Always happens when I want to write a second day in a row. I overloaded myself, hyped myself up too much, had a whole pot of coffee with sugar and creamer and fashioned myself a nice hyper headache.
I know it seems silly, but writing six pages really took it out of me last night. I blame the coffee.
So from 9am to now, currently 1:39pm, I haven't written one fictional word. Instead, I decided to web browse some of my favorite authors and ones that I wish to read. I started with Clive Barker than took a glance at some Anne Rice. Inevitably, I always end at Stephen King. Somehow I was led to his Wikipedia page and stumbled on this article, one that made me do a double take. Maybe this has already been covered by other bloggers, but the news still disturbs me a little.
"On November 19, 2009, while on a promotional tour in Toronto, Canada for his latest novel Under the Dome , during a reading at the Canon Theater being moderated by the filmmaker David Cronenberg, Stephen King described to the audience an idea for a sequel novel to his 1977 novel The Shining . The story, King said, would follow a character from the original novel, Danny Torrance , now in his 40s, living in upstateNew York, where he works as an orderly at a hospice and helps terminally ill patients pass away with the aid of some extraordinary powers. [1]

While on the road, I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one a new Mid-World book (not directly about Roland Deschain, but yes, he and his friend Cuthbert are in it, hunting a skin-man, which are what werewolves are called in that lost kingdom) and a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn't speak).[2]

On December 31, 2009, it was revealed that Doctor Sleep received 5,861 votes, while The Wind Through the Keyhole received 5,812. "

A sequel to The Shining? Why?Is he writing too much? Tell me what you think.

The Power of eBooks

So far, I've come to realize that ebooks are way more popular than print books. Case in point: I've been selling way more ebooks than I have print copies.
Even today, with the job market, real estate market and consumer market flipped upside down, people are still hesitant to spend too much for one thing. I have done so in the past myself. I buy most my books now through goodwill. But if a book really stands out, I'll buy no matter how expensive it is.
Lately, I've been catering to people who just want a taste. To try before they buy, so to speak. So, I'm happy to announce that Mr. Dead Eyes and For What It's Worth are selling steadily on the Amazon Kindle. Their price? Only 99 cents, less than a pack of bubble gum. I also have Wearing Donnie Torr, my newest book, and the longest, at 336 pages, up there as well for just 99 cents.
On Smashwords, with all my titles, I've been giving them away as free downloads (Formats include: HTML, Javascript, .mobi, EPUB, PDF, RTF, LRF, PLAIN DOC and PLAIN TEXT) and have garnered over 800 downloads to date.
Also, I've just recently decided to widen my audience and make all my titles available on the Barnes and Noble Nook for the unshakable price of 99 cents. That's right, folks. Whether you're a kindle owner or a nook owner, you can still be able to get my books. So read some, tell your friends and send a review or two my way. In the meantime, as always, I will be writing. I'm working on the second short story collection and my next novel. We'll see where this leads. Thanks for being loyal readers of my work.

Shorties For Now

Novels, whether they be 200 or 400 pages, can be a big undertaking. So can short stories in some respect. I like to put just as much focus on short stories as I do novels. But, on occasion, there has always been a few ideas that are a wild spark that cannot be tamed. Something that needs to be written at that moment before the fire of it dies out. That's the drive that I love from writing short stories.
On one side I will have a story I need to spend some time on, even check out a couple of books from the library for research.
On another, I'll have stories that I have to challenge myself to write in one sitting or write it before the week is out. The majority of these stories have only one or two scenes and are purely dialogue -driven.
For novels I work at a slower pace. It took me six years to flesh out the plot and characters for Mr. Dead Eyes. For Wearing Donnie Torr it took me two years but also was a hundred pages longer than my first book.
For right now, I want to take the road of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. I'm going to start selling my short stories to magazines. It's what you have to do for exposure. At the moment I have 35 to 40 short stories under my belt. By year's end, I hope to have 150. So who knows? Open up your favorite magazine, scan the table of contents and you just might find one of my short stories...

Roberto Scarlato's Triple Threat

So let's recap. We haven't done one of those for a while. I doubt that we've even done one but we'll see where it takes us. I once said that I wanted to try to be on 100 blogs. I tried, queried and asked 50 blogs to publish a post of mine. I ended up on less than ten blogs. While I'm thankful that these blogs gave me the time of day, it's still less than the exposure I wanted to shoot for.
I also said that I wanted to read 10,000 books by year's end. Even with piling on the audio books and such, I've only been able to read 285. Not even close to my target goal. So, in short, a failing effort.
Then, an even bolder statement, I said that I wanted to be published by a well-recognized publication like Random House or St. Martin's Press by year's end. I was hoping that printing my books would help get me noticed. As it turns out, there are about two months left to go and still no book deal contract. Even if I don't get published by Random House or others, I love writing and self-publishing. I don't care if it takes another ten years to get a book deal, I'll still be churning out titles via Amazon for as long as it takes.
Just recently I published a new title called Wearing Donnie Torr. There is a link for it to the right of this post. At 336 pages it's priced at $14.00.
I've also started posting my titles on Scribd.com and Smashwords.com and they have been looked at here or there but I'm going to try to get more exposure somehow. Soon, I plan to podcast both For What It's Worth and Wearing Donnie Torr through Podiobooks.com.
But for right now, I'm experiencing the troubled times portion of this blog that any author goes through: I want more people to notice and read my books.
So, if you feel like it, I'm calling all readers, old and young a like to try and rush the charts. You wanna make me happy? At least buy one of my books through kindle or paperback on my birthday which is November 2nd. Mr. Dead Eyes, Wearing Donnie Torr and For What It's Worth are the titles so far. I hope to finish two more short story collections in the months to follow. But I need your support, to know that you guys are out there cheering me own. Spread the word, send ten emails to your friends about these books if you have to. Whatever you can do I would deeply appreciate it.
Three books.
November 2nd.
Rush the charts.
Help these books!

Her Name Was Olivetti Nostalgia

Last night I dreamt I was riding shotgun in a pale white station wagon with wood paneling. I was wearing a white shirt, my hair slicked back, my arm out the window, hand gripping the top of the car door window, like I usually do when I want to feel the breeze up my sleeve. Nestled in my right sleeve is a folded pack of smokes. Wait a minute, I think. I'm not a smoker.
Turning to my right, I see that the car is being driven by my sister, she smokes. She smoked in the dream yet the cigarette never fizzled out. She looks annoyed, turning the wheel this way and that. We're not out for a joyride, not in this black night. The shops and stores and restaurants whip by us in the night. I can't place the town. It could've been any town within the radius of five miles from where I live right now. That's how plain it looked. But when you dream, as dreamers do, everything is blurred.
We pull up to a goodwill shop and I could feel the hairs on my arms prickle with delight. We've finally found it. It's from this exchange that my sister and I share that clues me in that I was the one who suggested we search for this one particular goodwill shop.
I bolt from the door and enter the shop. It seems peculiar to me that a goodwill place would be open this late, but hey, everything seems weird in a dream...cause you don't know you're dreaming yet.
I scan the shelves and racks, desperately looking for something. That's when I see it. It's near an endcap on the fourth shelf, exactly at stomach level. It's black, slick, the keys on it look brand new. It's a small Olivetti typewriter. The figure, who is me, in the dream pets the typewriter, thankful that he's found it after an exhausting search. Meanwhile, what I like to call my dream specter, overlooks how glad my persona looks and recognizes how important this typewriter is to him. But it is puzzling.
It's true that one of my life goals is to write out an entire manuscript on a typewriter, so far I've had a clumsy affair with laptops and desktops. In some ways, I'm still finding my voice. But what if it's the tool that matters the most. What if a typewriter solves all my writing problems, winging it old school, so to speak. The only other time I even touched a typewriter was that bastard thing that my mother kept in the attic which hated my words and I hated it. But that was nowhere near as elegant as this. That one was built of scratched plastic panels and buzzing sounds. This one just had basic alphabet, a couple of punctuation symbols and a ribbon; pure poetry for the eyes.
It was almost haunting how I watched myself look around suspisciously, making sure the coast was clear. I pulled out a roll of white paper from my jean pockets and laid them next to the typewriter on the right side of the shelf. I fed the paper in and began typing. The rhythm began to jump, making my fingers dance across the keys, I was really catching the flow. I didn't even know what I was writing. But, from the traces that I've gathered, I must've typed at least twenty five pages or so.
A clerk appeared to my left, asking if I wish to pay for said item. I nodded, almost embarrassed that she caught me while I was on a roll. I brought it up to the register, wondering what a fine price for this treasure must be. I was guess 200 easy. The cashier startled me by saying it would only cost 59 dollars. I paid the dough, brought the thing up to my chest, hugging it, keeping it as close as a newborn. What happened next, after I walked out of the store and back to the car, I caught a quick flash of me in my apartment, with the typewriter on the coffee table while I was hunched over it on the couch, noisily tapping out with my two fingers what I would hope to be a grand opus.
Then I woke up. Strangely, I had the dream embedded in my mind all morning. I just kept thinking about that typewriter. Curious to find such a typewriter, the first website I came to talked of such a typewriter. Black, small, ribbon, easy to use...and it only cost 59 dollars.

Is this a sign?

Publish This Book

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Whenever I get off work, I've always got my nose in a book. I'm on a constant search for more reading material. Back in March I frequently visited Barnes and Noble in Oak brook. My routine consisted of me grabbing three or four books I was curious about and schlepping them to the upstairs cafe.
At the time, I was thumbing through The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates, which I finished, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenanc e , How Starbucks Saved My Lif e and Publish This Book.
I like...

How To Be More Productive

These dry spells are killing me. Honestly, I get the worst tension headaches now when I know I should be working on a project. In the past four months, I've been able to finish one short story. That's it. That is also pathetic. I maybe wrote twenty pages total in all that time.
One of the things I've learned about being a writer is that you have to be disciplined. You have to create goals and standards for yourself. More importantly, you need deadlines. Something that will pressure you to...

Where In The World is Roberto Scarlato?

Been MIA for months now and I know I owe you, the readers, an explanation.
Here's the Gist:
The Announcement ~
"I'm on the phone with my girlfriend, parked at my local jewel. I'm reclined, relaxed. I'm happy to have such a sweet person in my complicated life. When I say complicated I mean that my family life was practically devouring my daily life, routine and taking a toll on my emotional equilibrium. Then we start talking about marriage. We've talked about it many times before and we always t...