Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 9

Putin the Mystery Writer?

by John M. Urban

Where has Vladamir Putin been? Everyone from the BBC, to the New York Times, to analysts in Langley have been trying to figure solve the mystery. Putin’s eleven-day absence led to rampant speculation. The list of probable explanations included:

• He had a botox reaction

• He was dead

• He was with his gymnast girlfriend while she gave birth

• He was vacationing

• He was battling power struggle

• He was just messing with us

Here at Write on the Water, we saw the answer as both obvious and surprising: he’s been away writing a novel. Yes, a Mystery Whodunit.

(My own writing space is somewhat less formal, but we all have our personal preferences)

At this point in his life, Putin has amassed a personal fortune that some say is between $40-$70 billion. Other than a handful of despots from the past, few can rival the personal and political power he wields at present. He even has sex appeal; at least he thinks he does. But has he penned a New York Times bestseller? No. Has he won an Edgar for Best Mystery? No. Have his stories been optioned by Hollywood? Nyet.

Of course he wants to be a novelist. He also has the ability to overcome a major writing obstacle – he will receive precious few rejection letters from Russian literary agents.

Putin, who served in the KGB for 15 years, wouldn’t be the first former spy to pen fiction. Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and John Le Carre had all worked as spies before they became best-selling authors. Some spies – E. Howard Hunt being an example – even used writing as a cover while they worked as a spy. That “Write what you know” adage comes in handy after spending a few years doing intelligence field work.

(Squiggles that only a KGB/FSB intelligence officer would understand)

And come to think of it, Putin does seem to have a bit of a Hemingway complex, doesn’t he. He hunts tigers and polar bears, shoots darts at whales, flies jets, races cars, rides a motorcycle, scuba dives.

However, there is a problem associated with this theory: eleven days isn’t much time to write a book. Sure, Robert James Waller wrote The Bridges of Madison County in a two-week stretch, but it seems likely that President Putin is working on something bigger than 42K word love story. He does, though, possess what every writer fantasizes about – fast and accurate secretarial support.

This is, of course, all speculative on my part. But if Putin disappears again in the next month or so, remember, you heard it here first.

Who knows, we may even see an Amazon/Russia rating format that allows for 6-stars reviews.

Share on Facebook

I am a do-it-yourself junkie.

By Mike Jastrzebski

I hate to admit it, but I think I’m addicted to do-it-yourself projects. I was in my twenties when I was bitten by the bug. My first wife, my two-year-old son, and I moved from Detroit to the Maine woods where I planned to build a log cabin, write, and live off the land. After all it was the 70’s and living off the land was a big thing back then.

We lived in a tent for seven months while I built the cabin, and after that I wrote about a dozen short stories which didn’t sell. Unfortunately, it was not a very good place for growing our own food and the jobs we were able to find paid little and satisfied even less. Eighteen months later we were back in Michigan, but neither the writing bug nor the do-it-yourself bug died.

Here are a couple of pictures of that cabin. I built the stone foundation, cut the logs, peeled them, and moved the family into the cabin in seven months. This took some help from my wife and a little help from our neighbors when it came time to put the roof on.

Between the log cabin and moving onto our sailboat, Rough Draft, I gutted and remodeled a 100 year old farmhouse and then gutted and rebuilt much of Rough Draft. I don’t have any pictures of the farmhouse but here are before and after views of the starboard interior of the boat, and of the exterior. And if you’re wondering, yes, I made the cushions and did the paint job.

          

Of course, living on a boat has resulted in a series of other do-it-yourself projects from installing davits and solar panels to putting in a watermaker, just to name a few recent projects.

But I didn’t stop there. When I began publishing my own books I not only wrote the books, but like many other indie writers I formatted the books, contracted the covers, and I am now in the process of redoing my website and several other projects that are above my current skill set. Fortunately, I have friends to turn to for advice, and when the going gets tough there’s always the internet, so I know I’ll get things done. After all, I’d never built a log cabin or worked on a boat before I started those projects. I guess like any other addiction, you have to want to quit, and I’m just not there yet.

Share on Facebook

Mirror, mirror

Little Christine

 

by Christine Kling

The time is 6:00 a.m. and I am sitting in a dark corner of the lobby of the Hilton Doubletree Hotel in Portland, Oregon. I’m here for Left Coast Crime 2015, one of many crime fiction fan conferences I’ve attended since I first started down this road as a published writer. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I will turn 61 years old, but every time I find myself in this conference environment, I revert to feeling like the little girl pictured at the top of this page. She’s little, vulnerable, and most of all, she wants to be liked.

At the start of this year, I chose my 3 words for 2015 and one of them was BRAVE. I keep trying to remember that word when I walk into the lobby filled with authors and readers and scan the crowd looking for a familiar face. My heart speeds up and my palms grow slick with cold sweat. I feel just like I did back when I was a kid and I was carrying my tray through the school cafeteria looking for a place to sit. Somebody please, look my way and make me not alone.

I don’t have any problem casting off the lines and pulling out to sea in a boat. Sometimes, when I talk to non-sailors about the many miles I’ve sailed across oceans, they will say, “Oh, you must be so brave!” Hardly! I’m not terrified of the sea like I am of this conference milieu where it feels like a high school popularity contest. There are the “cool authors” surrounded by their flocks of fans, but I have never been one of them. I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, content to hug the walls and corners of the room, both hoping and not that someone will recognize me.

Certainly, I have felt fear at sea, and each time I’ve taken off on a passage, I have felt a respect for the many things that could go wildly wrong. But those dangers are familiar to me. Every time we get into an automobile and hurtle ourselves through space at upwards of sixty miles an hour we are also putting ourselves into a familiar danger. We don’t dote on it. So, no, I am not a very brave person — yet. But I’m working on it.

I recognize that it takes a certain amount of courage and ego to put one’s stories out into the wild and invite others read them. It requires even more courage to go to Amazon or Goodreads and read through the reader reviews of my stories. But the most difficult thing of all for me is to walk up to a crowd of writers and readers and feel brave and confident. Most of the time I step off the elevator, see the crowd and feel this instant flight mechanism kick into overdrive. I glance at the doors that lead out to the street and think how great it would be to walk the streets of this city alone. I look around for the nearest restroom. It’s okay to be alone if I choose to be alone, but alone in a crowd feels like rejection. We writers get enough of that.

But I am here for one thing – to network and meet other writers and readers. It’s not enough to just write the books. This business also requires marketing and promotion. So, I step into the crowd.

What is it about writers that makes so many of us introverts? I guess we have to be loners to enjoy spending all the solo hours at a computer traveling through imaginary worlds. And that is what makes life on a boat so appealing to writers, I think. We can sail our home offices away from the crowds. But from time to time, we need to get out and press the flesh. I know it’s been a while since I’ve done this sort of thing when I meet a few old friends and they comment about how long it has been since I attended one of these national conferences. There’s a reason for that.

The lobby is starting to fill as people come downstairs for the first large group session in the ballroom. My panel is at 10:15 later this morning. Our topic is “Write What You Know:Personal Experiences into Stories.” There is a quote that is often wrongly attributed to Hemingway. “It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed.” It doesn’t matter who first uttered that idea — most writers, I recognize the truth in it. In order to write stories that will keep readers turning the pages, feeling the tension, not wanting to turn out the lights, I have to be in touch with my own fears, with the vulnerable little kid who might not be the face I see in the mirror anymore, but she’s still inside me. And you know what?

She was also pretty damn brave.

 

Fair winds!

Christine

Share on Facebook

Fictionally speaking…

C.E. Grundler

I’ve come to realize what I could use sometimes is a shirt that reads:

DO NOT BE ALARMED

This person is a WRITER. While they may spend a large percentage of their day hearing imaginary voices, they are theoretically harmless. Please disregard any random, questionably violent, illegal, immoral or otherwise unsettling statements and/or behavior.

That might alleviate a few of the strange looks and odd glances I get from time to time. Or not. Yesterday I was passing through an electronics super-store, and I paused by the DIY home security set-up. Nifty things, these new security systems. Wireless, they set them up in minutes, and then you can use your smartphone or tablet to watch, listen, monitor and control everything from electronics to power and water within your home… or anywhere else you might have placed them. I’m just sayin’….  When I first paused next to the display, my husband asked if I was losing faith in our present alarm system, which we’d recently upgraded to the ‘3-dog’ model. And while our  MUTT system may activate for false alarms such as Squirrel or Imaginary UPS Truck, when it comes to security and affection, I’m sticking with my canine alarms. No, I was considering other, more interesting criminal and entirely fictional applications. My husband is familiar with my characters, and I replied that it wouldn’t be hard to discreetly set this up in Ricky’s house so we could mess with him and monitor him remotely. Only I didn’t realize there was a sales clerk standing directly behind me, and his expression as I turned was priceless.

That shirt might be helpful around friends and family as well, because I’ve come to realize it’s not always clear to others when my mind is off in another reality. Sometimes it’s comments I might make, or the music I’m listening to, or a sudden interest in something entirely out of character…for me, at least.  It’s perfectly in character for which ever character’s head I might be in at that moment. But it has led to confusion and concern as I alternate between a suicidal brain and a homicidal one. I’m okay, I’m definitely not suicidal, not homicidal (at least at the moment…jk ) I’m just a writer, wrapping up another round of edits, and I’m currently passing through those darkest, most bleak chapters, right before my troubled characters rally their inner strength… or just chanel their inner psychopath…and emerge questionably victorious. This third book had a steep learning curve, but I refused to let it stop me. While it took far too long to reach this point, I’ve gained a better understanding of where I was working hard rather than smart, and where I was holding myself back.  I’ve come through with a strong, solid story that takes everything to a new level, and I don’t think I could be happier.

Share on Facebook

Cover poll-the top two designs were…

By Mike Jastrzebski

First I’d like to say thank you to all of our readers who responded to my call for help last week on selecting a cover design. Number 1 was the dark cover of a man running in the light with a lightning bolt in the background.  Number 2 was the man running on a dock between two railings.

If you have time I’d love it if you could take one more poll. This poll includes changes on the #1 and #2 covers, plus two other designs by one of the two designer finalists. These two designs were submitted after the poll so they were not on last weeks poll. Here’s the link, and remember that for a full view of any cover just click on that cover: http://99designs.com/book-cover-design/vote-9kjr8f

 

Share on Facebook

A little help picking a cover?

By Mike Jastrzebski

Ever since Christine Kling ran a cover contest last year through 99designs I’ve been thinking about running one myself. Now that Stranded Naked Blues is nearing completion I’ve decided to take the plunge. I chose the Bronze, $299 package and set it up to start last Sunday. The initial stage is 4 days and is open to any designer approved by 99designs. In those 4 days I had 39 designers submit a total of 307 cover designs. This number includes covers that the designers changed and resubmitted in response to comments I made.

I was more than happy with the response and have so far narrowed the designs down to 20 covers. At this point I am able to make 8 covers available for a poll directly through 99designs. Mary and I went through the final covers and each of us picked 4 of our favorite covers, now I’m asking friends and readers of this blog to take a moment, if you have the time, to click on the following link and help us choose a cover. You will be able to rate the 8 covers with 1-5 stars and leave comments, but you’ll have to hurry because the poll closes Monday 03/02/15 at noon eastern standard time. (If the full cover image doesn’t show on your reading device, just click on the individual design to see the full cover.) If you want to know more about the book, I’ve included a book description below the poll link.

http://99designs.com/book-cover-design/vote-sayx9v

A Wes Darling Sailing Mystery/Thriller

Wes Darling is back in Stranded Naked Blues, the third Wes Darling Sailing Mystery/Thriller. Wes is searching for fun and possibly a little companionship when he joins hundreds of other boaters at the annual Stranded Naked Cheeseburger Beach Party on Fiddle Cay in the Bahamas. It’s all about good conversation, free food, and free drinks. The last thing Wes expects is to be drugged and to have his boat torn apart while he’s out cold.

Wes’s search for answers as to why he was singled out by the beautiful woman wearing the world’s tiniest bikini forces him to turn to his friend, Elvis, the phobic psychic. Wes figures good psychics are almost impossible to find, but Elvis steers Wes toward the answers. If only Elvis could have foreseen the trail of dangerous women, dead bodies, and buried treasure that would leave Wes stranded alone on a deserted island during a hurricane. When Wes realizes that not only might he lose his boat, but also his life, he sets out to find shelter with only one thought in mind, survival.

A hard boiled sailing thriller set amongst the islands and teal blue waters of the Bahamas.

Here’s that link again, http://99designs.com/book-cover-design/vote-sayx9v, and feel free to comment on your decision or any of the covers.

Share on Facebook

Audiobook Creation Exchange = ACX

by Christine Kling

Lots of authors, including our own Mike Jastrzebski, have blogged about the process of using ACX to create their own audiobooks. This terrific site is almost like a dating service for self-published authors and voice actors. We have the story content, and we post our books as available. The voice actors also have their own pages on the site with samples of other work they have done. They can look at what authors have posted books, and they can try out to be the narrator. Or we writers can look through the narrators, listen to their samples, and then invite them to audition.

When the Seychelle series was first published by Ballantine, Brilliance Audio made an audiobook of SURFACE TENSION, but they stopped there. I’ve always wanted to see the rest of the series made into audiobooks, and I undertook this project starting back in November.

Let me just say that I had a fabulous time auditioning the different narrator/producers, and I was blown away by the talent available. I chose Rosemary Benson, and I absolutely LOVE her work on this book. She is an amazing narrator and over the course of the next year, I hope to get the other two books in the Seychelle series done by Rosemary, too. I love how she does the Haitian accents in the book, and it’s fascinating to hear how a good actor plays these characters I know so well. She even did special effects for when they are talking on the VHF radio. She is awesome!

So, I am very proud to announce that the audiobook of CROSS CURRENT is now available from the Amazon page, direct from Audible, and from iTunes. On those pages, you can listen to the free sample and you will get an idea of what a terrific voice actor Rosemary is. If you are already an Audible member, this 11.5 hour book costs only 1 point. Or, if you have already downloaded the ebook from Amazon (even when it was free), you can buy the audiobook now for only $1.99 and use Whispersync for voice. That system lets you listen to the ebook, but if you want to switch to the ebook, it will synch to the place you stopped listening. I think that’s very cool technology.

The folks at ACX also sent me 25 codes for free downloads of the audiobook. I would be happy to send you a free code if you would go to my Facebook Author page, click to like the page, and then click on the message link there to send me a private message with your email address.

Audible (which is owned by Amazon) brings the reviews of the book over from Amazon, but real audiobook aficionados want to see reviews of the narrator. If you listen to the book, I would really appreciate it if you would post an honest review of Rosemary’s work on Audible. I have no doubt you will think she is as amazing as I do.

Fair winds!

Christine

Share on Facebook

They’re tracking me!

C.E. Grundler

Yes, it sounds like something a certain paranoid character of mine might say, but the fact is I’m sitting here right now with a microchip implanted beneath my skin. It’s amazing to consider where technology has gone in recent years, and where it will go in years to come.  But it’s a strange feeling, physically, an unfamiliar presence tugging the slightest bit as I move, the incision and staples itching as the skin heals. And mentally, it’s even stranger. There’s something a little smaller than a tiny flash drive implanted in my body, tucked close to my heart, reading each electrical impulse, tracking every beat and anything else that might be going on. Tracking, recording, then sending a wireless signal to a reciever each night as I sleep, uploading data for my cardiologist. With any luck, somewhere in that data we’ll pinpoint what’s going on, or more specifically, off on random occasions.

Recently, I’ve been going through more of the medical system than I prefer. But I’m not just a patient — I’m a writer.  Let me loose in a new, unfamiliar enviroment, and I immediately switch into research mode. I explore. I ask questions. Lots of questions. And I listen as others go about their daily routines caring for us patients. Just like boatyards or any other business, hospitals have their own pulse and rhythm, but it’s one I’m not familiar with. Put me on a bed hooked up to wires and monitors and IVs, and I’m filling my mental notebook with every sight and sound, filing away the experience of being trapped for hours upon hours in a web of wires and tubes, unable to even stand without aid. The most interesting thing I learned yesterday? Heart rate monitors have alarms (makes sense) that go off when the beat drops below a certain point, initially 50 beats per minute. Red lights start flashing, alarms start sounding, everyone rushes over to see that you’re fine. After the alarm kept tripping, they lowered it, again and again. And again. Apparently, my heart likes to idle somewhere around the low 40s, and even into the 30s.  Normal resting heart rates should fall around 60-80, though highly trained athletes can run lower. I can say with all honesty that I’m neither highly trained or athletic. Thus, the chip.

Now I can set off some security systems, and I have a little card to explain why RFID readers might find me more interesting. It’s MRI safe, but I have to be aware of the electromagnetic fields around me, including  which pocket I keep my phone in and which ear I hold it to. I’m not supposed to linger near the electronic surveilence gates in stores and libraries. I’m okay around microwave ovens, but need to stay two feet away from induction cooktops. And I’m supposed to give wide berth to portable radio and HAM transmitters. And for the next week, while everything heals, I’m on much restricted activity, which leaves me plenty of uninterupted writing time, and a little more insight into Hammon’s world.

Share on Facebook

At war with myself.

By Mike Jastrzebski

Both Christine Kling and I have written in the past about the difficulties of writing and living on a boat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but after all, the subtitle of this blog is So you want to quit your job, move onto a boat, and write, and it seems only right that I should occasionally post about the obstacles as well of the joys of this lifestyle.

The problem is that right now I’m not even writing. While Mary’s finishing up the copy editing on Stranded Naked Blues, my new Wes Darling mystery, I’m attempting to play catch up with the business aspects of self-publishing. Along with trying (not very successfully at times) to keep up on my blog posts, I’m rewriting all of my book descriptions, redoing my web site, and working at setting up a mailing list so that I can notify readers when my next book is available. And although all of my books are still available on Amazon, they are no longer exclusive. This past week I put all of my books up for sale on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple and I am hoping to get a Facebook author page up and running soon.

Finally, I am following in Christine’s footsteps and setting up a design contest with 99designs for a cover for Stranded Naked Blues. This will allow me to have multiple designers work up sample covers for the new book.

Cold but beautiful, at least by Florida standards.

The only way I can get all of this done is by sitting and working in one location. In this case it’s St. Augustine. This also means that along with the effort it takes to shop and keep warm up here (we have been burning between 70 an 80 pounds of charcoal per week in our wood/charcoal stove over the last few weeks), I am putting off all non-essential maintenance on the boat. I know it will catch up on me and I figure Mary and I will need to spend at least 4-6 weeks just working on the boat before we take off again next fall, but after all there are only so many hours in the day.

Well, I’m off to work on those publishing projects, and for those of you up north I hope you don’t hate me for complaining about a winter that had only one night where the weather dropped to a very cold 32 degrees. And yes, I’ll admit that I’ve been really spoiled since we left Minnesota and brought the boat down here to Florida 11 years ago.

Share on Facebook

Zero…

C.E. Grundler

That was the air temperature this morning, not factoring in wind chill. Still, on the bright side, at least I’m not in Boston or thereabout. And it’s the energy level I’m currently operating at.

I’d like to offer more insight into the world, writing, boating, or even mercury readings. But the last week, which started on a sad note, with a toothache on top, continued into multiple dental visits and an emergency root canal yesterday morning. Truly amazing, just how much pain one cracked tooth can generate. I definitely need to use that or some variant in a future book.  When all was said and done, I went home, numb and miserable, and took a nap, at which point the head cold everyone around me has been fighting finally caught up with me. My jaw is throbbing, my head is congested and pounding, I have a wonderful cough, and my focus is and has been at an all time low.  In times like these, there’s nothing much one can do other than get lots of rest and ride it out.

That’s my plan, and I’m sticking to it.

As for the weather, it’s going to snow here again tomorrow.  That’s the sum of this winter. It’s either about to snow, snowing, or just finished snowing. Every day.  I think Ithaca had the right idea.

Share on Facebook