Tosh McIntosh's Blog, page 10

What Pilot Error Means to Me by Nick Phillips

There’s probably no more than a handful of my personal friends and acquaintances who know I lost my dad in an airplane crash when I was seven. I mean, why would they? It’s not like I’m going to begin casual conversations with that tragic bit of personal history.

He was at the controls when it happened. The NTSB called it pilot error. Not a comforting term, especially for a kid who worshiped his father. I’m supposed to accept that my hero made the mistake that killed him? To heck with that. It’s been almost thirty years and I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

In contrast, I doubt there’s a single member of the Aviation Division of the NTSB who doesn’t know all about it. I mean, why wouldn’t they? After I graduated from USC with a degree in aviation safety, I used my newly acquired knowledge to evaluate every word of the accident report, visited the crash site, hunted down the few living eyewitnesses and systems experts who examined the original evidence. Ultimately I came up empty-handed. But I still didn’t believe it. Still don’t.

I think the investigators took the easy way out. Not maliciously, or with any intention of making it appear to be something it wasn’t, but as a result of the prevalent culture in the NTSB. Our charter today is the same as it was then, to search for clues with only one objective: determine cause and thereby enhance flight safety. But what if we can’t find anything definitive? Do we give up and write Undetermined on the bottom line? Or are we so dedicated to our mission that we consider that conclusion to be a failure?

Aviators, and I’m also one of those, have a saying about that:

They always try to blame the pilot. Especially when he’s dead.

As an investigator, I know that’s not true, but I understand the sentiment. And over the years it’s influenced my professional behavior, especially after I became a qualified Investigator-In-Charge. I run inquiries my way, and that means determination of pilot error is never made without direct evidence supporting that conclusion.

Has my attitude, fueled by personal tragedy no less powerful now than the day my father died, caused problems? Oh, yeah. No fisticuffs or anything like that, but I’ve got a rep, no doubt about it. For being a hard ass, I suppose, but when it comes to a job like this, we all have to be on the same team, all the time. I run a tight ship. Which means that when I screw up, like I did about five years ago, other team members never miss an opportunity to remind me.

It was an ugly one. They all are, of course, but thankfully not like this. Most of the pieces we recovered weren’t much larger than my hand. And they were crispy. Post-crash fire will overcook the physical evidence every time. That forces an investigation to concentrate on all that’s left, like human factors.

Did somebody make a mistake? A mechanic, maybe. We sift through the logbooks searching for evidence that inspections might have been missed, or the wrong parts installed, or weight and balance calculated incorrectly. If the pilot was in contact with Air Traffic Control, is there anything in the voice recording or radar tracking tapes to indicate that the pilot or the controller did something to cause the crash?

And in this case, the investigation that set me up for the big investigator error, the pilot had a reputation as a tee-totaling straight shooter who approached flying as something akin to a divine responsibility. This guy would never take any chances in the air and always prepared meticulously for every flight. And when I heard the rumblings among the team members to indicate informal agreement that there might be some rot under the exterior facade of his reputation, I made a fool of myself by cracking the whip a few times.

The message was consistent with my reputation of being very reluctant to insert the possibility of pilot error into the report. So when the autopsy protocol, through toxicology from a small amount of human remains, finally documented the pilot’s blood alcohol level as that of a rip-roaring drunk, the truth slowly emerged, reluctantly, from the one person who knew what had happened the night before the early-morning crash.

According to a $1000-per-night “escort,” over a 12-hour period the pilot had broken every vow that supported his “Mr. Clean” external persona. He’d just made a business deal with the potential to catapult him from doing okay to trading in his light piston-twin for a business jet. The impromptu celebration cost him his life and set me up for eating a bit of foul-tasting crow.

I still feel the same way about how we address the possibility of pilot error, but I’ve dismounted from the high horse.

Or so I thought . . .

 

The Changes They Are A’comin’

Since this blog first appeared, I have changed themes once and the appearance of the theme multiple times. I made the decision to launch a satellite blog dedicated to the novel when I first published Pilot Error, but in retrospect that wasn’t a good idea. Keeping up with one blog is hard enough, and I can’t add one every time I publish a book.

Over the next few weeks, therefore, I will be moving the posts specific to that novel from toshmcintosh.com/piloterror to the new Pilot Error logbook on this site. Once that’s accomplished the site URL will redirect here.

In addition, I’m in the process of redesigning the appearance of this site so that the pages, logbook categories, menus and sidebar widgets will better support all the functions I need to combine here. And while the site will necessarily become more “crowded,” it’s the only practical way to keep up with changing requirements.

The prime motivator for making this alteration is my goal to have four books on the Austin Indie Writers table at the Texas Book Festival, October 27-28, 2012. Along with the other writers in this group, we expect to have over 20 individual titles for sale. In addition to Pilot Error, I will offer two recently published non-fiction books.

Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer’s desk, is the personal story of a writer’s journey from the seed of an idea to a completed, polished, ready-to-publish novel. It covers the writing of Pilot Error up to the point of deciding to Go Indie! Book Two of the series will detail all the headache, heartache, and backache of having to think like a publisher.

Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit, is the personal story of an aviator’s journey from the first hint of wanting to become a pilot through initial solo as a student in Undergraduate Pilot Training with the United States Air Force. Book Two of the series will continue with the completion of military pilot training and beyond.

Paperback and eBook editions of both books are for sale now at various online stores. I am in the process of altering this site to offer “buy now” links for the convenience of visitors interested in purchasing them.

Within the next few weeks, I will be hard at work to complete Red Line, the second novel in the Pilot Error series, and have it ready for the festival AIW table. It’s an ambitious goal, but what is life without aspiration?

 

Pilot Error – Chapter One

Wilson didn’t want to kill the guard. That would leave a mess behind. Someone might get curious, nose around, ask questions. No, the job tonight required stealth.

He loved that word. And the synonyms, like furtiveness. That just sounded right, especially when whispered. It slid off the tongue. He’d prolong the “s” and think of himself as a viper in the night, coiled like a spring, silent and deadly.

From his hiding place near the edge of the dark, woody greenbelt, he peered through the airport perimeter chain-link fence at the hangar thirty yards away. Raindrops slapped on the hood of his parka and the blanket of leaves around him. Cold wind rustled the branches above his head. He preferred working with nature’s white noise as an ally, but tonight it favored the guard, all the more reason for caution.

Wilson had initially accepted this assignment on contingency because he’d never tried to penetrate the secure area of an airport. Especially after 9/11, it seemed far too risky. But his concern proved to be groundless. Of the 19,000 airports in the US, only a small percentage received the security upgrades designed to prevent aircraft from being used as weapons of terror, and for good reason. To fly the largest airplane based here into a skyscraper would be like a suicidal bug smashing into the windshield of a Mack truck.

Earlier that day, he had masqueraded as a salesman for an alarm company and offered the owner of the hangar a security survey. The man laughed him out of the office. Said he couldn’t afford it, especially to prevent something that had never happened. Besides, the airport authority paid for a night watchman. Didn’t cost him a penny. Now, Wilson understood why.

The guard, a typical rent-a-cop “door rattler,” sang country music while walking his rounds. The fool announced he was coming. And he never varied his routine. Every half-hour since midnight, he’d stood under the awning above a door on the back side of the hangar for a smoke break. Atomic-clock predictable.

Wilson peeled back the cuff of his parka and glanced at his watch: 2:47. The guard was taking his nicotine hit fifteen minutes early. Wilson needed less than ten minutes and could still do this without bloodshed unless the idiot started chain-smoking.

He pulled the pistol from his waistband through an opening in the outer pocket liner of his parka and screwed the silencer into the barrel. Then he checked for a round in the chamber, a full magazine, and slipped the weapon in his parka’s belt. Eyes on the guard, he waited.

Two minutes later, the guard dropped the butt on the ramp, ground it out with his boot and began walking toward the far end of the hangar. Wilson stepped up to the fence, reached above his head and shoved his fingers through the links. Lucky for him, it had no topping of razor wire and served primarily to keep deer off the runway. Just like his airport at home. He’d seen what colliding with a full-grown Bambi could do to an airplane on takeoff or landing, and it wasn’t pretty.

As the guard turned the corner, Wilson climbed over the fence, ran across the ramp, unlocked the door with a battery-powered pick gun and stepped inside. A row of ceiling lights bathed the cavernous interior in ghostly white. Airplanes, portable worktables, and wheeled tool boxes were jammed together like a jigsaw puzzle. Faint odors of aviation maintenance lingered: fuel, oil, paint, heavy-duty cleaning chemicals. Comforting, in a way. Reminded him of his hangar.

Weaving through the maze, he made his way to a cabinet mounted on the opposite wall. Aircraft tail numbers identified the open, partitioned sections in the cabinet as distribution boxes for each of the airplanes based at Schiller Aviation. The section labeled N924DP held two tattered cardboard containers sitting side by side on a shelf.

He removed the one marked IN, knelt, and placed it on the concrete floor. In the beam of a small flashlight held in a nylon pouch sewn on his watch cap, he thumbed through the contents: two eight-by-ten-inch envelopes imprinted with the logo of a navigation chart provider and addressed to Larchmont Enterprises, LLC, one business envelope from the Golden Aircraft Company, and a small electrical part in a plastic baggie with a green SERVICEABLE tag. The innocuous, everyday items of aviation on their way to an airplane.

And inside his parka, an addition. He lifted out a padded mailing envelope and took one final look at the postage, address, and return labels. No one would ever guess it hadn’t gone through the US mail. He placed the mailer in the container, returned it to the shelf and retraced his route across the hangar.

With his face close to the glass, he peered through the small window set into the door. No sign of the guard. Wilson eased the door open and looked to his left where the guard had always appeared from around the corner of the hangar, then to the right. Nothing. He took one step outside and froze.

Embedded within the sounds of rain and wind, something foreign drifted on the gusts. He closed his eyes and tuned out the background. After a few seconds, he retreated into the hangar and let the door close gently. Way early, the karaoke guard had suddenly turned even more unpredictable. Wilson pulled out the pistol, heavy in his hand, comforting. Like an addiction. The anticipation ratcheted up his heart rate just enough to heighten his senses and add another layer of alert. He sidestepped left past the hinge edge of the door.

After a moment the guard appeared in the window and stopped under the awning, two feet from the door and facing the forest. Wilson leaned to his right, took a quick peek down, noted the guard’s duty belt with a radio and a flashlight carrier. No weapon. He relaxed a bit. All he had to do was wait a few minutes, watch the door handle for any movement to warn him—damn it! The door rested against the latch bolt and hadn’t closed all the way. If the guy turned around and saw that . . .

Wilson flattened himself against the hangar wall, raised the pistol to the level of the guard’s head and took up the tiny bit of slack in the double-action trigger. One step inside, he’d have to put the guy down. So much for an easy in and out.

After a few seconds, barely audible over the wind and rain, a click, a rasping snap, pause, another click. A Zippo lighter. Cigarette smoke drifted through the slim crack between the door and jamb. Wilson eased his pressure on the trigger and took a deep breath. The smoke awakened a familiar hunger that had never really left him.

He’d quit over twenty years ago. For his health, although fear of cancer had nothing to do with it. On that night, two steps from the mark, Wilson’s knife poised to strike home, the guy had ducked, swiveled, came in low, hard, and fast. Wilson almost died, and the man’s last words remained with him still: I smelled you.

He enjoyed a second-hand smoke until a boot wet-grated on concrete, stubbing out the cigarette. The guard began singing a recent country hit, something about being unlucky in love. Not bad, actually. He ought to turn in his flashlight for a microphone. The voice faded away as the guard continued his rounds.

Wilson lowered the pistol. Jesus. That was close.

Over the years, in spite of all the planning and preparation for countless jobs, it so often came down to something as simple as this. One small coincidence either passes into history as a freebie or changes the complexion of future events. Tonight, he gladly accepted the gift.

Wilson opened the door and checked both ways. He slipped the pistol in a jacket pocket, stepped out, closed the door, and sprinted for the fence. Ten minutes in the greenbelt at a fast walk put him at the edge of the woods along a deserted street. On the other side in a motel parking lot sat his rental car, inconspicuous among many. Just the way he liked it. He closed his eyes to listen and zone in on the night. Nothing. He strode to the car and climbed in.

With the heater on high, he poured a cup of coffee from a thermos, wrapped his hands around the cup, and after a moment drained it in a few swallows. He shook the empty thermos, wishing for more. It felt like he’d never warm up. Getting too old for this field work.

He yanked off his gloves and blew into his hands, then took a small piece of notepaper from an outer pocket on his cargo pants and set it between his legs on the seat. He removed the flashlight from the pouch on his watch cap, held it close to the paper to shield it and focused the beam.

Holding his cell phone in the other hand, he entered the ten-digit sequence with his thumb, pausing after each number to concentrate before pressing the next one. When the complete phone number was displayed, he carefully compared each digit on the paper with the screen before he pressed TALK. After three rings and a beep, he said to the silence, “Operator Forty-One, activate, one hour,” and turned off the phone.

So much for the groundwork. The time had come to watch and wait, to be there just in case. The anonymous voice would soon begin calling on the secure line, pestering Wilson about when it would happen. He would ignore the inquiries as he always did. Contact with clients occurred at his convenience. The next time they spoke, the topic would be money. Lots of it. Enough to call it quits.

And he was so ready. Ready to abandon the double life. Ready to live in the light. And maybe one day he’d be able to stop looking over his shoulder. No more nightmares with the eyes of the dead staring at him. Put his head on a pillow and leave it all behind for longer than a few hours.

A check in the rearview, both side mirrors, and all around the parking lot found nothing but dark rooms, sleeping cars, wet asphalt, and pale shafts of rain under yellow streetlights. He pulled the pistol out of his jacket and laid it in the seat by his leg, then eased the car out of the lot and accelerated into the night toward a rendezvous with someone else’s death.

Author’s note: If this excerpt intrigues you enough to consider purchasing Pilot Error, links in the sidebar to the right will take you to any of the online bookstores where you can find a paperback edition and eBook versions for all the popular e-reading devices. If you still aren’t quite sure, check out the Review page on this site to see what readers are saying.  In any event, thank you for visiting my blog. I hope you will visit again soon and take advantage of the opportunity for a good read. I appreciate your interest in and support of an indie author.

Book Signing After-Action Report

I approached my first-ever book signing last evening with a mixture of excitement (optimism) and resignation (reality check). I’d spent a good bit of time drafting my remarks, practiced them multiple times, trimmed the duration to a target of ten minutes, and then did something I probably should have done a few days ago: check out the other authors.

Speaking of other authors at a signing, the first question that came to mind was whether I’d rather do a solo event. I didn’t have that choice at BookPeople, but it’s a valid consideration due to curiosity alone.

I’m glad it wasn’t an option, because I’d have been speaking to a “crowd” of about 11 folks, loyal to the end, who so graciously showed up to support me. (Note: one of them drove with me to the event and helped carry food, two posters, and copies of my just-published Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the Writer’s Desk, which I chose to bundle as a giveaway with each book sold. Thank you, darling.)

The point, of course, is that for all but celebrity authors, the audience at a book signing will consist of folks who have already purchased your book, plan to, or were forced into attending by a nagging sense of duty.

A group signing, on the other hand, at the very least puts you in front of folks who support another author. They aren’t there for you, but who cares? It’s an opportunity to showcase the result of all the pain and suffering you’ve invested in getting the book out there. A real book, one you can hold in your hands.

I assumed (always a risky thing to do) that the other authors would be talking about their novels, in spite of the fact that the non-fiction market is many times the size of fiction. In addition, I interpreted four names on the roster for the evening as meaning four books. Wrong again.

A few hours prior to the event, I discovered that two of the author names were listed for one non-fiction book, although neither person had written it. The third author was signing a book with no description, that could have been either fiction or non-fiction, and at this point I’m wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

The concern was that my initial assumption had led my remarks astray. I knew that most of the folks supporting me were writers, and concluded that the same would be true for the other authors. Triple wrong, and now my writer-oriented remarks had been called into question with no time to adjust. Okay, stick with the script or wing it. I’m a pilot, after all, and I should be able to do that.

One of the issues was the speaking order. We had e-mail agreed in advance that we’d figure that out at the time. I arrived first. The BookPeople staff approached me to talk about it and indicated that they would put me first at the podium. I suggested that we wait for the other authors, who arrived a bit later and came up with an order on their own. They were very polite about offering me the opportunity to change it, which I declined.

That put me in the middle, between the two speakers (not authors, remember) for the first book and the single author of the last one. Okay, so here’s the situation as it occurred.

The seating area didn’t fill completely, and some of the audience elected to remain standing. I’m not sure how many people were there, who showed up intentionally, or who just happened to be drawn by the activity. Or maybe by the wine, chips and salsa, cookies and loaf cake. Like an army, a book signing may run on its stomach.

We began the readings with a book described thusly: “The Avatar Path: The Way We Came. On the surface, this is a book of words that conveys a pleasant melody. But underneath the stories, chords of consciousness are being strummed that will transform the way you think. A story of an awakening that has become a worldwide movement. Reading this book will change your life.”

Then I presented my writer-dominated-audience remarks to a group consisting of only a small percentage of authors. I think I did a pretty good job, but as always, I’d like do do it over to improve this or that.

Following my remarks, the author presented Tales of Travis County. No other description had been provided, so I had no clue what to expect. I mean, with that title, it could be a collection of short stories or personal experiences. I had to wait to find out.

Up stands a 58-year-old guy who looks like he’s much younger and in terrific shape. An impressive dude, let me tell you, especially when he informs us (those who weren’t there because of his book) that it’s a collection of experiences gleaned from 25 years as a Travis County Deputy Sheriff, including an extensive assignment on a Special Weapons and Tactics team.

He’s also president of the Central Texas Mountaineers, and that explained why so many of the folks in the audience looked like he did, lean and ready for anything. Maybe the constant threat of falling off a mountain does that. I jest, of course.

So, one key point of this after-action report is that I never expected to be sandwiched between a book about personal growth and enlightenment and an MP-5 and body armor. By any standard, to place pilot error in that mix created an unusual but very interesting evening. To anyone who didn’t make it, you might have thought it worthwhile.

And from this writer’s desk, I know of at least two copies of Pilot Error and Book One of Wings On My Words that ended up in the hands of mountain climbers. One of them had been a skydive instructor. A friend of his is an airline pilot, so it was preordained that we would joke about how most pilots feel about skydiving:

How can anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane?

To that I added from my own experience the reaction within a fighter squadron when a new guy would show up with a set of military jump wings pinned below his aviator’s wings:

If this guy is that foolish, I do not want to fly with him on my wing!

 

 

 

A Happening Event in the Discoverability Gamble

In previous Writer’s Desk posts I’ve mentioned the sine qua non (without which there is nothing) of publishing: discoverability.

And yes, that’s a made-up word for visibility, but it’s important for writers to establish and maintain a discipline-specific vocabulary. Like pilots do. It keeps non-pilots guessing and creates an aura of wonderment about aviators, those steely-eyed and adventurous creatures of the skies. But I digress . . .

With the exception of a NYT bestselling author, the challenge is the same whether you are legacy or indie published. If you don’t get out there and publicize your book, no one will. And publicity is like a lunch. It’s never free. Nor is it ever a sure thing, no matter what you believe or what anyone tells you.

I recently read a blog post about an author whose book had made it onto the granddaddy list with lots of buzz and an opportunity to appear on a major morning news program. You know the ones, with immaculately coiffed anchors providing a little bit of news and a whole lot of predigested pabulum.

But millions of viewers tune in, right? Some of them have to become interested in your book once they see you up there with the lights, camera, and action.

And yet the author honestly reported that he could not attribute a single sale to the appearance. He’s lucky he didn’t have to pay for the privilege, which brings me to the subject of doing that.

How do authors get the most return on their publicity dollar? Over the past six months or so, I’ve become convinced that it’s no different than shoving a silver dollar into a one-armed bandit and getting robbed.

Okay, so it’s a gamble. Which means that sometimes you win, and you can bet your life that anyone who finds a way to predict that won’t have to do anything else for a living. The rest of us pay our money and take our chances.

When I made the decision to put Pilot Error on consignment with BookPeople in Austin, Texas, and purchase an additional promotional package, I did so without expectation that I would sell enough copies to recoup my initial investment. If all I had done is purchase a blog tour, or a press release, or a featured banner on a website, I’d probably regret having chosen a publicity ploy that produced very little in return.

But the BookPeople option is different. Not that it has the potential for reaching more potential buyers, because it most certainly doesn’t.

But as I mentioned in a previous post, it’s a real bookstore. And this coming Friday evening at 7 p.m., I along with three other writers will participate in a Local Author’s Night book signing. With real books, the kind you can hold in your hands.

I’m excited about that, even though I fully realize that for all but celebrity authors, book signings are best described as mutual admiration meetings. The audience will consist of relatives, friends, and acquaintances who have already bought my book if they have any intention of doing so. And those in attendance for the other authors in a group event like this one probably won’t be convinced to plop down their hard-earned cash for a book by an author they’ve never heard of before and most likely never will again.

Just today, however, I read about a tactic that sounds really promising. Not for me, but for authors who by circumstance are able to avail themselves of the opportunity.

You’re supposed to schedule an awesome launch party where you live, and one in your hometown or where your mother lives. Moms have secret ways of influencing people to show up at events.

As the clock ticks down to the magic hour of what will undoubtedly be my only book signing for Pilot Error, at least until John Travolta contacts me about purchasing the movie rights, I’ve been working on my remarks. When the first page was blank, I pondered doing a reading, which apparently is the most common author-at-the-podium event.

But something about that didn’t sit well with me, and part of the indigestion derived from my loosely held opinion that fiction isn’t really meant to be read aloud. At least not by me. Not with my current voice anyway. If I were a baritone, maybe.

So for now, at least, I’ve written a first draft of remarks that connect my forty-plus years as a professional pilot and love of aviation with the compulsion to create good stories well told.

And why not? That’s the underlying concept of this blog, my words and my wings joined together in formation.

Speaking of which, I’m taking copies of my first non-fiction book, Wings On My Words, tales from the writer’s desk, to bundle with signed copies of Pilot Error at no extra charge.

How can anyone resist that?

 

There Are Gremlins In Those Pages

In various posts over the past year I’ve mentioned the time warp that settles over me when sitting at this desk working on the latest writing project. Prior to April 2011, the passage of time was dominated by either putting words on paper or trying to arrange the ones already there into some semblance of order. Then everything changed.

As reported elsewhere, I entered a writing contest, began actively submitting my novel Pilot Error to agents, and opened up the Pandora’s Box of Indie Publishing. Looking back over the past twelve months, the decision not to hire someone to help me publish my book, but to invest my time learning to do it myself, in many ways put the rest of the world on hold. Including this blog, which I’ve enjoyed maintaining in the past and have always intended to keep fresh with regular new content.

There’s so much to talk about that I can’t possibly include it here. It’s Mother’s Day, (rest in peace, Mom), my wife, her daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren and I will share a brunch in a few hours, and then I’ll attend a regularly scheduled roundtable meeting of the Novel-In-Progress Group of Austin (NIP).

We’re reviewing a portion of new novel by my friend and fellow writer J.T. Conroe, who is a retired architect. The submission includes a scene on board a jetliner, which is analogous to me submitting an architectural thriller. JT asked me to read the submission in advance, which I was more than happy to do, and we both know that my aviation background is a good way for him to filter the scene through a finer mesh than the average NIP member might bring to roundtable.

I mention this because today’s meeting also involves the main reason I’ve been wrapped in a time warp over the past couple of months. Not to mention the demands of daily life, I’ve been busy with the first of two non-fiction books to be published prior to Red Line, the sequel to Pilot Error.

I’ll save the background on the non-fiction for another post. For now, suffice it to say that Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer’s desk, is almost ready for publication. Last Friday afternoon I received five copies of the first paperback proof from CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand service. That evening and continuing into Saturday, I scoured the book from cover to cover looking for errata. Today at NIP I will hand copies to fellow writers who have graciously donated their time and talent to put “fresh eyes” on it.

Although self-editing is a skill all writers need to possess, for most of us it’s an imperfect talent, rendered less than completely effective due to the the blinders of familiarity. It’s as if our eyes get ahead of our brains, and we see what we expect rather than what’s really there. Using a proof of the paperback during copy editing is a very good idea because the brain “sees” real print differently than digital, and final formatting can be checked as well.

Wings On My Words will also be published as an eBook, so the requirement to copy edit a digital version still remains. But if the interior file uploaded to CreateSpace for printing the paperback is used to generate the eBooks, proofing them is not so much a matter of copy editing per se as it is to ensure that the conversion to EPUB and MOBI formats does not cause formatting problems.

Ultimately, writers have to look not only at the macro view of the forest, but the veins in the individual leaves. If you are a writer, you understand the difficulty of doing that. If you’re not, you can take it from me that unwanted words (or the holes where one should be and isn’t) do hide. Right there on the page/screen. And when the moment finally comes, when you see the erratum for the very first time, you know beyond the shadow of a doubt.

There are gremlins in those pages, and you don’t have to be writing fantasy to encounter them.

 

Presentation Aftermath

This blog and its companion have been sitting idle for the past month due to a combination of factors, all of which vie for my attention on a daily basis. Of special significance to me are the writing of a non-fiction series about my personal journey (so far) as a writer, soon to be followed by a companion series on aviating, and the demands of maintaining two sport aviation airplanes.

Even more questionable in terms of logic than owning two airplanes is allowing the required annual condition inspections to lapse so that neither one is legal to fly. The inspections were due last July, and  I elected not to spend a couple of weeks working on airplanes with triple-digit temperatures outside creating hell on earth inside the hangar. Add to that my decision to indie publish Pilot Error and take a part-time job with BooksOnBoard, and the aviator in me had to take a back seat to other demands. But finally, that’s no longer true. Both airplanes are freshly inspected, clean and shiny, and ready to slip the surly bonds.

Coincidentally, just yesterday a visitor to this blog commented on one of my all-time favorite posts, “Koga’s Zero” by Jim Rearden. After posting my reply, I realized the time had come to close the loop on my last post about being a guest speaker at the Lakeway Men’s Breakfast Club. An honest report card has to acknowledge that I could have done a better job.

My first mistake was to assume that creating the presentation and practicing it at home could prepare me for the real thing because of my previous experience as a classroom instructor. Like riding a bicycle. Second, I didn’t anticipate a couple of problems with the physical layout. And third, I failed to accurately predict the difference in the audience’s level of interest in the two halves of the presentation.

I knew from a previous visit to a Breakfast Club meeting that the lectern-mounted microphone was wireless and could be used as a handheld. But my computer would be connected to a projector on a table in front of the lectern. To advance the slides, I would need a mouse/trackball or a remote control. My Apple TV came with a remote, but when I tried it with my MacBook Pro, it only worked with Front Row, a media center software application  for navigating and viewing video, photos, podcasts, and music. So I used a trackball, which fixed my position behind the lectern. Not ideal, but workable.

In practice, however, I felt awkward from the beginning. The room was full, with the front row of seating very close to the lectern and the seating area wider than it was deep. One of the principles of public speaking is to make eye contact with as many people in the audience as you can. But to do that effectively, I had to turn my head to either side, which altered the volume of my voice as I turned away from the microphone. That bothered me immediately, and probably the audience as well.

But the most significant lesson learned has to do with my decision to devote half the presentation to the fact of pilot error and half to the fiction. My “spies” in the audience reported that interest appeared to wane when I began talking about the process of writing the book. I didn’t notice it while speaking, but the Q&A session highlighted it with the first question.

As an attention-getter, I began the presentation by referencing the deadliest accident in aviation history and mentioned that I had a supplemental briefing prepared with the details if time and interest permitted. It did, and they wanted to hear it.

In retrospect, I’m not sure I could have anticipated that reaction in advance of making this presentation for the first time. Writing the novel has been a fascinating challenge, and it was far too easy to assume that it would be interesting to others as well. But in the aftermath of receiving a less-than-ideal report card, the good news is that I now have the opportunity to improve both the content and the delivery for the next time. And yes, it’s already scheduled.

A curriculum director for the UT LAMP Seminar/Lecture Program at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) saw the notice about the presentation in the Austin American-Statesman and contacted me about being a guest lecturer. Here’s the description of the program from the OLLI website

UT LAMP™ (Learning Activities for Mature People) welcomes all adults with a desire to continue life-long learning in a group setting of their peers. With up to 500 members from every profession and life path, LAMP offers a lively forum where our diverse members can meet to share interests and cultivate new friendships while expanding their knowledge.

UT LAMP™ lectures and seminars are presented during three, 6-week terms in the fall, winter and spring. Lectures, followed by a moderated Q&A session, are presented on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Members may to choose to attend as many or as few lectures as their interests and schedules allow. LAMP seminars are drawn from a wide variety of subject matter and are offered in six related sessions per term on Tuesday afternoons.

In addition, UT LAMP™ offers our members the opportunity to join book and discussion groups, In-Town Tours and Out-Of-Town Tours, and other social activities throughout the year. LAMP members are also encouraged to donate their talents and time performing executive, administrative and technical activities to ensure our continuing success.

During a phone conversation with the curriculum director, I mentioned the issue of how to divide the presentation time between the fact and fiction of pilot error, explained why it was of concern to me, and asked for her opinion. The lectures are scheduled for one hour, followed by a 15-minute Q&A session, and we agreed that 45-50 minutes devoted to the fact and 10-15 minutes to the fiction would be ideal.

So, I’m on the schedule for the winter semester in the first available opening, on January 17, 2013, at 9:30 A.M. That seems like a long way off, but it means I have plenty of time to get it right, which is a good thing. The lecture hall in the Joe C. Thompson Conference Center seats about 200 folks, and I’ve been told to expect 150-200 people in attendance.

Developing the new presentation is all up to me, but I won’t have to deal with the two physical limitations that caused trouble the first time.

If I’d researched the topic of remotes more carefully, I would have known that my Apple TV remote can work with PowerPoint 2008 (which I’m using) and 2011. All I had to do was hold the remote close to my laptop, press the Menu and Next buttons for 5-10 seconds, then open the PowerPoint presentation and click the Slideshow button to put it into slideshow mode.

And as for the microphone? I will be provided with a Lavaliere. Armed with my remote and mic’d up, I’ll be free to roam the stage.

 

Have Presentation – Will Travel

A few years ago, I was offered the opportunity to participate in Senior Day at Westlake High School by giving a presentation on careers in aviation. That's like asking a financial adviser about investment opportunities. Talk about flying for bucks to a captive audience? When and where?

During my career in the Air Force, fourteen years as an instructor pilot and weapons and tactics officer made me very comfortable with public speaking. But the last time I stood in front of a crowd, the state of the art in AV equipment consisted of a Kodak Carousel slide projector and an overhead projector. And although I'd never even opened PowerPoint, it didn't take long to appreciate the vast improvement in capability it provides for developing a nice presentation.

Writing the script, creating the slides, and polishing the talk brought back memories of hours spent preparing for classroom instruction, phase briefings for tactical fighter advanced training courses, and the frequently inevitable requirement to stand in front of a group of general officers, where it felt as if there were more stars in the audience than in the entire Milky Way.

I learned to keep my presentation materials under lock and key. Always looking to do mischief, my fellow fighter pilots took a special delight in tampering with the carousel trays. They would reverse some of the slides or turn them upside down, then sit in the audience and snicker when the results of their sabotage flashed on the screen. Never trust a fighter pilot.

I've given the career presentation enough times to be comfortable with it, so each year it takes only a short practice session to prepare. Then last year, I received an opportunity to build on that experience when my sister-in-law Pat Evans sent me an email with the draft of a letter recommending me as a guest speaker. Pat proposed sending it to a couple of local clubs with a list of topics, all aviation related. I jumped on that terrific idea like a duck on a June bug, especially since I had recently published my debut novel. Publicity is a good thing, right? Hopefully this will be the good kind.

As of this writing I'm batting .500 with Pat's suggestion. On Wednesday morning, March 21, I'll be the guest speaker at the Lakeway Men's Breakfast Club. These guys are serious. Here's the information I received from Tom Cain, who schedules the weekly programs:

"The Lakeway Men's Breakfast Club began in 1974, and has an average attendance each week of over 70 members and guests. Many of our members are retired corporate executives, professionals, or military officers. Many members are active in community and charitable activities in the Austin and Lake Travis areas. I assure you that we will be an attentive audience and that you will receive feedback."

Thus began a new exploration of PowerPoint's capabilities, and I now have a slide show and script ready to go. Tom also said that I can bring copies of my book, and I have a poster of the eBook cover to place at the signing table.

The only bad news is that these guys are early risers. The meeting begins at 7:00, with the speaker program from 8-9:00. I plan to be there when the doors of the Lakeway Activity Center open at 7:00, because I cannot ignore the lesson learned early in my Air Force instructor pilot career: Always be early to set up well in advance and check the operation of everything.

This will also provide the opportunity to include a prologue slide show with photos from my first combat tour in Vietnam, interspersed with scanned images of all my flight suit patches. It will be a colorful backdrop for pre-talk activities, and a trip down memory lane for me.

Alarm clock, please don't fail me now.

 

A Real Book on a Real Shelf in a Real Store to be Seen by Real Book People

The (pipe) dream from the very beginning of my writer's journey was to see my novels in a special display right up there in the front of a bookstore and push James Patterson off to the side, or better yet, spine out in the shelves with the rest of the crowd.

But that was not to be, and along with a horde of other writers I've embraced the world of indie publishing, which to hear the legacy authors tell it, is tantamount to a plague like unto the Black Death for all that is holy about the craft of putting words to paper, or horrors, to an eReader screen. Never mind that legacy authors are publishing eBooks by the thousands, theirs are good ones and all that other stuff is trash.

My decision to publish in both electronic and print format derived in part from the original pipe dream (the thrill of holding my novel in my hands), and in part from a marketing decision: if anyone showed even the slightest interest in Pilot Error, I wanted it available in multiple sales outlets, formatted for any eReader and in paperback.

While struggling with all the practical tasks required to prepare the book for sale, I knew that the paperback would never make it into a Barnes & Noble  past those free-standing sensors at the front entrance. They aren't there to deter shoplifting, you know. They detect indie books. If you don't believe me, try carrying one in there and see how fast the alarm bells sound. =;-)

Smiley faces aside, I had to accept the reality that buyers could only find the print version on Amazon as a print-on-demand choice, or order a signed copy directly from me as an Amazon-approved seller. So focused was I on these preconceived limitations that I failed to consider something intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer: 4 miles distant from my writing desk, 8 minutes drive time on an average day, sits one of the few remaining independent bookstores in the world. Well, duh, Tosh.

Book People are nice people. Even knowing that I've offered my book for sale in a store that seeks to steamroll all competition into the pavement, they greeted my inquiries with courtesy and offered me the opportunity to participate in their consignment program.

I elected to purchase their additional promotional package, and two weeks later, my novel will be: placed on the shelves in the local author and mystery sections; featured on the "Whale" table at the front of the store for a minimum of two weeks; listed on their website; one-time featured on their newsletter, and; included in a Local Author's Night book signing event scheduled for May 25, 2012.

From a promotional perspective, I have no way of predicting whether the cost will be recouped in sales. It's the classic "catch-22″ of discoverability driving sales driving discoverablity. But I'll never know unless I try, and like I said, Book People are nice people.

For what it's worth, I'm proud that Pilot Error made it through the front entrance.

Goodreads Giveaway Gone and the Review Question

On Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 12:00 AM, the two-book Goodreads Giveaway for Pilot Error ended with a total of 640 members (out of a total 6 million) entered to win. That's a tiny percentage, even when considering that the Giveaway was restricted to US members.

That may sound as if I care, which I don't, and I'm disappointed, which I'm not, because the important point is that Goodreads provides the opportunity to put a book in front of a whole lot of folks who love to read books, review them, and share with others what they are reading and reviewing.

At last count, 64 members had listed the book as "to read." That's only 10% of the people who might have wanted nothing more than to get a free book, but you have to start somewhere, and hopefully some of those members will follow through with the intent and might even review it.

I shipped the books out to the winners last week. Anyone who signs up promises to review the book if they win, which brings be to the second half of this post title.

Within one of my writer's groups, an ongoing conversation addresses the relative benefit of reviews versus press releases for attracting readers. It's an interesting question, and any writer with a book out there should be aware of the various ways to enhance discoverability, the first objective of any marketing effort, and the topic isn't restricted to comparing reviews and press releases, but also reviews and paid reviews.

Some writers think that reviews from readers mean nothing. Without knowing the qualifications of the readers who review the book, who cares about their opinions? Others think that you can reasonably assess the validity of any review, and that a well-written, comprehensive review carries sufficient "weight" to be worth considering. But what about an independent review from a respected source? Shouldn't that provide a more reliable evaluation?

Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933. It serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Books are submitted to Kirkus, which then picks the ones it will review. Self-described as the world's toughest book critics, Kirkus has every incentive to cultivate a strict reputation of impartiality.

It goes without saying that Kirkus wields a powerful pen whether it chooses to review a book or not. Consider the variable effect of no review, a less-than-positive one, or glowing praise. And the key ingredient supporting the validity of Kirkus is the principle of caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware. Once you submit a book to Kirkus, what you get is what you get. There's no "O0ps, I wish they hadn't said that" clause.

But Kirkus Reviews does not consider indie books. Here's the explanation: From a print-production and economic standpoint, it is impossible for Kirkus Reviews to review titles that fall outside the realm of traditional, mainstream trade titles from traditional, mainstream and other established publishers.

And then this: That's where Kirkus Indie comes in. No matter what type of book you'd like reviewed, Kirkus Indie can accommodate you, with the chance to have it included in an issue of Kirkus Reviews and the monthly Kirkus newsletter, which are distributed to key book-buying and filmmaking professionals and representatives.

Okay, so an indie author can get a book reviewed. For a price. But can the reader of a Kirkus Indie review have the same confidence in its impartiality? Kirkus obviously has a vested interest in making sure you can. But there's another factor to consider. Kirkus Indie does not use the principle of caveat emptor. The author has the option of not publishing the review.

I personally don't think that affects the value of a Kirkus Indie review. So what if readers don't see reviews of books that don't fare well? They are looking for books that do, and that's what they get. On the other hand, readers aware of Kirkus Reviews and Kirkus Indie, and who rely on them for information to help make book-buying decisions, might be inclined not to even consider a book unless it shows up in either of the two places. Absence may well imply its own negative stigma for some readers.

Kirkus Indie reviews aren't cheap, especially when considering that most indie authors make little or nothing from selling their books. And some writers maintain that if you're going to spend money for publicity, you can obtain more value from a press release than a Kirkus Indie review, especially since the author controls the message.

In my opinion, that logic is self-defeating. Any reader knows that authors love their books, so how can a press release controlled by the author provide anything of value by way of review?

Of course the author loves it. All you have to do is attend a social function with an author in the crowd and it's worse than having a pilot in the room: "Well, that's enough about me. Let's talk about my novel!"

At this point in my indie journey I'm undecided on the question of paid publicity. But if I had to choose today, Kirkus Indie would be the front runner because all the other paid options like blog tours, interviews, and press releases clearly appear to be self-promotion with no claim whatsoever of impartiality.