Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 94

HOW TO WRITE A GREAT 1ST CHAPTER

We all know how important first impressions are ...

Well, first chapters are our first impressions with readers, editors, and agents.

Take the LOOK INSIDE feature to your book on its Amazon page.  The prospective buyer will probably give you 30 seconds ...

which is the first paragraph at the most.  

If it teases them to read the whole first chapter, then that chapter better be Oscar Worthy.


1.) TENSE AREN'T YOU?

First person, past tense tends to draw the reader into the mind of your character, 

but write in the tense in which you think your novel's action in your head.  

It will feel most natural to you and in the end, to the reader.



2.) IN THE BEGINNING ...

The first chapter must ensnare the reader.  

I still remember that iconic scene in ROGUE NATION with Rebecca Fergeson in the opera house high back-stage ...

arching her long leg in the slit skirt to rest her elbow of the arm holding the rifle to kill Tom Cruise.


Scenes teasing sex and action always rivet.

But the first scene of that movie was Tom Cruise hanging on for his life on a plane's wing as it took off, yelling for Simon Pegg to open that damn door!

Start where your story hits the ground running.


3.) BOND.  JAMES BOND

Introduce a strong character right away.  "Call me Ishmael."

When designing your Chapter One, establish your characters’ situation(s). 

What do they know at the beginning? 


 What will they learn going forward? 


What does their world mean to them?



4.) IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

As with movie monsters, less is more with a novel's setting right at the beginning.

Your reader will fill in the blanks for you if you but deftly sketch in a few striking details.

"It was the sort of alley where a wino would hole up in to die." 


5.) THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

Despite what I wrote above, details are important.  

But you must be laser-accurate with as few of them as you can manage.

The plastic restraints hurt.  But they did not hurt as much as that scalpel would.  It hovered over his right eye.

His nose wrinkled at the whisky on the breath of the surgeon as she slurred, "I know you are wondering why I am doing this to you."


6.) MAKE YOUR 1ST CHAPTER A MINI-ME

It’s no accident that many great novels have first chapters 

that were excerpted in magazines, where they essentially stood as short stories.

 Every chapter should have its own plot, none more important than Chapter One.

 Focus on action.

 Be decisive. 

A good way to do that is to make a character take decisive action.

The first chapter should have an arc and closure 

that promises more of the same or that the victory was really a hollow one unrealized by the protagonist.


Here's wishing you a best-seller that will make you rich and famous! 

OVER A MILLION SERVED!

Over one million readers have visited my blog!
Great, right?
You want to know how many author blogsget a million views A MONTH?
Don't ask.  It's depressing.

No matter how many millions visit their blogs   MOST WRITERS WON'T  MAKE ANY MONEY
“It’s called a ‘best-selling author,’  not ‘best author.’”  -Robert Kiyosaki
MANY WRITERS THINK TOO SMALL 
"Better to aim for the moon and miss,  than aim for mediocrity and hit."  - Mark Twain
If you think small, that’s what you get. 
Most writers don’t think big, 
 and therefore don’t create big products which produce big results.
Listen to the very first self-published mega-author,Mark Twain
“There is such a thing as a technically gifted  yet very boring and unsuccessful writer.”
LEARN THE BUSINESS END OF WRITING
 Subscription publishing was considered a ‘low class’ method of publishing :
many new authors who did not yet have the following to be picked up by major publishing houses, 
elected to try ‘subscription publishing’. 
 Elisha Bliss was a pioneer in this kind of publishing 
and he took Twain on the trip to success & money with him. 
Clemens was not too proud to learn and worked to understand publishing, 
using the skills he learned in newspaper reporting to pen the classic THE INNOCENTS ABROAD. 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/
It’s easy to get a million views from a random viral article with the right keywords.
It’s hard to gain true fans who consistently read your work and buy your books month after month.
 “Successful people do  what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do -
leave the comfort of the known road  and strike out in a new direction."   - MarkTwain
  WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I'VE BEEN MUGGED!

Cyber-mugged that is.
It is frightening to think someone is wearing my face across the internet.
I was checking my emails this morning after a draining weekend of blood runs 
to find this email from Createspace:
" This is an automated message confirming that royalty payment information has been updated in your CreateSpace account.    If you did not make any changes to this information, please use the Contact Support feature in your account to reach our Customer Service team."
I had done no such thing!
I checked my account settings to find that instead of the Send Check option,  the direct deposit option was now chosen with a name that was not mine!
Payment Type Direct Deposit Bank Account Location United States Bank Account Number *********2662 Bank Routing Number *****0084 Bank Account Type Checking Name on Bank Account MAXIM KISLYI
Who the blazes is MAXIM KISLYI?  
Of course, I contacted Createspace and took the appropriate measures.
Now, few are buying my print books, but I would like to get the few royalties from them!

What is scary is that this is the SECOND time in ONE week this has happened to me.

On September fourth, I received an email from eBay
Your item has been listed!

Innosilicon A9 ZMaster 50ksols/s Zcash Miner w/PSU Limited Qty Price: $2,500.00 Item #: 292712215395 End Date: 10/04/18   I never list items to sell on eBay. Wow!  $2500 is felony territory.
Of course, I phoned eBay Support and got things straightened out, quickly changing as many passwords as I could remember.
It never occurred to me to change my password to Createspace.
MAXIM KISLYI, pick on somebody with more money than me!
Has anything like this  ever happened to any of you?

Disappointed in THE NUN?

Richly atmospheric but ultimately story-less. 
You see what it could have been, but the creatorsdrew back from bringing it to that level.



Being a writer,I saw what I could have done.
In fact, I believeI have already in a sense done it.



In The Town That Hated God



Four priests have disappeared in a rural village.
The fifth sent is not there to listen to confessions. 
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/
For merely $1.99 see for yourself if my story,  
The Town That Hated God, doesn't evoke a shiver or two.
There is actually a story with character arcs, actions taken which make sense, 
and evils that have genuine, understandable agendas. 
The interior images are evocative, too.  
C'mon, give me a chance to entertain you this weekend.

How To Make An Impact With Your BOOK_IWSG post

We all want to write a best-seller.  Not for fame nor for fortune.  

Just to be able to support ourselves living out our dream.

But how to do that?


I could date Gal Gadot, of course, but I think her husband might object.  

And he looks mean! 



No.  

We will have to do it the old-fashioned way: by using the tools at hand the best way we know how.

HOW TO ULYSSES YOUR WAY  TO NOVEL SUCCESS
1.) SUCKER PUNCH YOUR READER WITH THE FIRST SENTENCE
The thinking behind the studio's thinking on making movie trailers of late is 

TO MAKE IT SO COMPELLING THAT PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY A TICKET 

no matter what the critics say.


The first sentence to my story in TALES TO BE TOLD AT MIDNIGHT is

"The rape had been the best thing to have happened to her."

How could you not want to read on?  

And remember the FIRST LOOK option on Amazon will hook your reader 

if you just set the bait correctly.


2.) LEARN FROM THE MOST POPULAR GIRL IN HIGH SCHOOL
BE FAST.  

Not free.  People value what they pay for.

But put out ... as quickly as you can with quality one after another.  

 You want to have other books to offer should lightning strike and you gain a fan.

Which leads me into the next point:




3.) BRAND YOURSELF WITH A SERIES

It won't hurt much, 

but it will give a new fan certainty 

of enjoying more adventures with the characters she or he has grown to love.

Readers who like one novel will confidently buy the next.

And the series name will draw the eye of past readers browsing thumbnails of your book covers.

Which leads me to my next point:


4.) LET YOUR TITLE BE LIKE THE SKIRTS OF THAT POPULAR GIRL
BE SHORT
Choose a brief emotive title. Pack it with meaning, menace and drama.

 Why short? 

Your cover will shrink to a fingernail on Kindle and other mobile devices. 

So make it legible!

James Patterson uses such titles: 

ZOO, THE FIRE, WITCH & WIZARD, THE QUICKIE

Which, of course, leads me to the next point as well


 4.) ATTENTION SPANS HAVE CHANGED
TV sound bites, Twitter feeds, Buzz feeds, Facebook posts ...

All of them have conditioned those who still read to bore easily.

A bored reader is more dangerous to us than any lion, for you will lose them as customers.

Keep your sentences as short as models' skirts.

James Patterson is the expert here. 

His sentences average just six words. 

His paragraphs are typically no longer than five lines and often just one line.

Tell your story your way, but if it is to make an impact there is a model to follow.


 5.) WE ARE A LONELY SOCIETY 
Give your MC a foil character with whom to talk ... even if it is only the moon.

Even Tom Hanks had Wilson, the basketball, 

with whom to share his innermost thoughts and fears on that island.

Conversations with the buddy character can introduce conflict to keep a scene alive, 

give the main character a plausible sounding board for their woes and triumphs, 

and also prompt the protagonist to reveal  information.

 Foil characters also furnish sub-plots. 

Get them into troubles of their own. Make them victims.
  
Use a foil as a series character in your every novel as I do with Mark Twain 

in my NOT-SO-INNOCENTS series and in my Egyptian Victorian fantasies.



6.) A PLOT WORTHY OF A MOVIE


Dueling vampire empires, alien evil clashing with ancient darkness, 

Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla -- 

all worrying less about saving the world than 

saving their friend who is married to a demon-empress,

poised to set all the world ablaze with her dark ambition.

Outlandish but so was SHE and LORD OF THE RINGS.

You must strive to craft a riveting plot worthy of your reader.



7.) WATER COOLER DIALOGUE
My blood center still has a water cooler and coffee maker where workers chat a bit during the day.

Work to have your dialogue be quoted at the water cooler of today's culture:

Twitter, Facebook, Buzz Feeds, personal blogs.

There is a reason NIKE sells ball caps and T-shirts with their logo.

Be as smart as NIKE, have your fans advertise for you.

I HOPE THIS HELPS  IN SOME SMALL WAY,  ROLAND

Prelude to Terror

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/{Only $1.99 in Kindle}
What scares YOU?

What nightmare wakes YOU up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat

THE DEAD HAVE NO SAY –  
In 1946, a former O.S.S. agent seeks oblivion and anonymity as a faceless prop master in a movie studio. 
One midnight, what he finds is an actress' severed hand and a deadly manhunt where the roles of predator and prey constantly change.

THE TOWN THAT HATED GOD – 
Four priests have gone missing in a rural Massachusetts village. The next priest sent is not there to hear confessions.

DEAD YET NOT – 
A Boston crime lord and a Lakota psychologist learn the things death can buy cannot be returned or refused.

MURDER AS A KINDNESS –
A dying woman is irresistible prey for her enemies … and one lost Lakota love.

A SHORE NEVER REACHED – 
A prodigal Native American son returns to the revelation you always bury the past alive, and soon or late it digs its way back up for its pound of flesh.

REUNION OF ENEMIES 
The House Eternal. Its Viking caretaker finds doing the right thing is never appreciated.

IN TOO DEEP 
An undead Texas Ranger and a dying author discovers he misunderstood the deal he made with the devil. 
 Ignorance of an unholy contract does not keep it from being fulfilled.

These are stories of a barren age filled with those who worship the new god of technology, 
and the old ones of lust, greed, and ambition that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them –
While ancient evils sneer in the shadows, picking off the self-blinded one by one by one.

Take a Halloween chance on my stories, will you?  
It is filled with evocative pictures ...
Even one of Midnight at the end requesting you be nice to his human with a review!

FLY WITH MARK TWAIN

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/
  Now, an audio book!
Imagine a honeymoon aboard a flying Mississippi River boat.  
Then, imagine Mark Twain being a guest! 
Imagine him being a mentor to 11 year old Nikola Tesla.
Unwelcome passengers include 
a vampiric Benjamin Franklin, 
an insane Abraham Lincoln,
a vengeful General Sherman,
a pursuing Captain Nemo aboard his Nautilus, 
and a thieving Thomas Edison.
Add to that company: 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, 
Ada Byron (inventor of the 1st computer language a century before computers), 
Margaret Fuller, first American woman foreign correspondent ...
Well, things get interesting!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG/(Audio book under $10) 
Hurricane Katrina made landfall this day in 2005 as a Category 4 storm 
but still remains the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
What would have been its aftermath if supernatural and undead predators existed?
 

ALTERNATIVE To Twitter

Brendan Nystedt wrote an intriguing article on WIREDhttps://www.wired.com/story/join-mastodon-twitter-alternative/

Luke O'Neil wrote
another in ESQUIRE
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/amp22777589/what-is-mastodon-twitter-platform/


Beth Skwarecki
another 
in Lifehacker
 https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235

Mastodon  mastodon.social
Mastodon is a refuge from the mean tweets and somewhat "unique" mindsets that hammer at your Twitter accounts lately.
 
Visit the site and me to say Hello will you?

@ scifi.fyi 
mastodon.cloud

LET ME FALL_ WEP post

It's time for  the AUGUST challenge, 
CHANGE OF HEART. http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

LET ME FALL 
{872 words}

"Let me fall,

Let me climb,

There is a moment when fear

And dream must collide."

 
I am the last of my race. I am Tuatha de Danann. And, no, human, that does not mean elf, or fae, or damned. I take that last back. 
I am damned.


"Someone I am

Is waiting for courage,

The one I want,

The one I will become,

Will catch me."


I have no memories of my youth. Youth. The word is a mockery to me.

Though I look a young woman, I have lived centuries which I do remember. I remember when the sphinx had a nose,

when the pyramids were caressed by shimmering limestone,

and when courage and honor were not hollow words.

Yes, that long ago do I remember.


"Let me fall,

If I fall,

Though the phoenix

May or may not rise."


Then how do I even know I am Tuatha de Danann? The knowledge sings to me from the depths of my spirit in the night.


Its melody mocks with teasing glimpses of a time long gone, yet unborn.


"I will dance so freely,

Holding on to no one;

You can hold me only

If you, too, will fall

Away from all your

Useless fears and chains."


How do I know I am Sidhe? It is the face which mocks me from the mirror.

High cheekbones which seem intent on bursting up and out of flesh which shimmers as if coated with stardust.

A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly term I could use.

Large, slanted fae eyes, chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy.


"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

There is no reason

To miss this one chance

This perfect moment;

Just let me fall."


But enough about me. What do you think about me? On second thought, do not tell me.

What care I what humans think of me? But I lie. I do care. At least about what one human thinks of me.


Roland Yeomans. DreamSinger. 

He is Lakota myth come to life. 
He is the shaman who sings dreams to life. And he will tell me my beginnings or die.



"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

I won't heed your warnings;

I won't hear them."


My mind is churning with images humans could not comprehend as I sway up the steps of the Art Nouveau house,

that is just one of the doorways into Roland’s psyche.

Just its name alone is punishment to think, much less speak: Jugendstilhaus in der Ainmillerstrabe.

Once it had been the home of the infamous Countess Franziska zu Reventlow,

her erotic lifestyle and cosmic nonsense had inspired and broken the hearts of an entire generation in Munich.

Now it has to settle for being the most elite restaurant in the city.

No knocking on the door. 

This restaurant is much too elite for that. Only a rare electronic key will work … a key based on the silicon ingrams of Roland’s own brain.

I have mine in my longer than human fingers. Roland had sung this establishment into being along with most of Munich back when he used the pen name, The Brothers Grimm.

I slide the key through the black slot whose color matches my short-skirted version of a S.S. uniform.

True, I am some seventy years out of date. But what is seventy years to a Tuatha de Danann?

A mere hiccup in time.

I remember Wagner trying to teach me German ... among other things. I go cold inside. 

I remember too much, feel too little.

I enjoy the glares of the pompous patrons as I roll my hips to the back table reserved for DreamSinger alone.

The maitre d' nearly breaks his neck getting to me, but I am already seated, making sure my short skirt is hiked up suitably indecent to induce doomed desire.

He stands trembling over me as I take out my copy of The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul by old Ludwig Klages from my skirt pocket.

I am almost through with his nonsense. Seeing how close he can come to the truth, while stumbling right past it always makes me chuckle.

The maitre d' isn't close to chuckling. "Fraulein, you simply cannot wear that uniform in here!"

"Sure I can. What is the matter? Afraid those power brokers to our right will find out your grandfather wore this uniform for real?"

He spins around so fast he leaves an after-image. Roland clears his throat across the table from me.

“He cannot help his past.”

I study this strange man. His eyes. By the White Lady, his eyes. 

They look as if they have seen all the pain in the world … and have felt most of it.

“I’m tired of this dancing, DreamSinger. Who am I?”

Roland looks truly surprised. “I thought you knew. You are my muse, La Belle Dame sans Merci .”

"Is that my name or my nature?"

"Both."

I sit back in my chair. I had been right, after all. 

I am damned.


To read more adventures of Fallen, buy THE LAST FAE in Kindle, Print, or Audible:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DQ9YBNY/

REWARD THE VALIANT HEART OF THIS NARRATOR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/
SETS SAIL TODAY IN AUDIO!

It is 1867 in an America a layer of existence from this one.   General Sherman was denied his march through Georgia by forces beyond his ken. 

Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated, though he wishes he had been killed instead of his beloved Mary. 

The battered Indian tribes of America have a strange refuge courtesy of the cursed Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord.   

A global war of vampire kingdoms is going on beneath the noses of the living world - 

and it is interfering with the honeymoon of the alien empress Meilori Shinseen. 

She ruled the Aztecs when a political execution took place on Golgotha. 

Meilori commissioned the sphinx to take her mind off repairing her starcraft. 

The warring vampire rulers have mistaken her boredom with ruling the nations of man as weakness. 

They have made a grave error, emphasis on the word grave.   
What is a not-quite-mortal groom to do? Survive as best he can.   Vampires, vengeful spirits of the earth, aliens among us, and 

a man with the blood of death in his veins trying to keep it from being spilled before his honeymoon is over. 

Come join the maiden voyage of the first air/steamship, the Xanadu, 
where murder, intrigue, and betrayal reign supreme...and that is just in the newlywed's bedroom.   
Joining the newlyweds are 

Mark Twain, 11-year-old Nikola Tesla, his faithful black cat, Macak, 

Horace Greely, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, 

and the mysterious Greek physician Lucanus.   
 Lurking in the shadows, hoping to kill them, are 

the insane Abraham Lincoln, the crippled General Sherman, the vampires, Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

 Empress Theodora, ruler of the Unholy Roman Empire, and the vengeful Captain Nemo, following in his Nautilus.   

Steampunk intrigue  and adventure  was never so much fun.