Clayton Lindemuth's Blog

I think this lady nails Shirley Lyle. Thoughts?

I have an audition open at ACX. Twenty-one auditions so far, and I’d say several are very good–but they don’t bring Shirley to life.

There is one exception. Mandy Fox. Yale theater, Broadway, etc.

I think she nails it. What do you think?

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https://www.claytonlindemuth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Shirley-Audition-Final.mp3

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Best day for My Brother’s Destroyer. Ever. (So far.)

The post Best day for My Brother’s Destroyer. Ever. (So far.) appeared first on Clayton Lindemuth.

“Pretty” audio book update

I’m expecting to receive the final recorded files for the audio book for Pretty Like an Ugly Girl any day. After I receive the files, I’ll review them, then send them to ACX, the audiobook publisher, for their final review. After I send them along, it’ll take about 2 weeks to go through their quality control, and to be published and available.

The same narrator, Kain Foster, will also be recording The Outlaw Stinky Joe. This project will begin after a short delay. I’m looking forward to having all four Baer books available as audiobooks!

The post “Pretty” audio book update appeared first on Clayton Lindemuth.

The Guy I Just Asked to Narrate Baer Creighton

Here’s a sample. Frankly, I was a little floored by the ominous rolling thunder of his narration. The punctuation, how he inflects his profanity, is perfect. I hope you all agree…

So who is he? Kain Foster, from California. KBeauFoster.com.

Check out his audition, and let me know what you think back on the Red Meat Lit Street Team post…

http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KBeauFoster_MyBrothersDestroyer_Audition.mp3

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Join the RED MEAT LIT Street Team Facebook Group

Announcing the RED MEAT LIT Street Team Facebook Group…

It’s an avid readers’ group where you can connect with other grit lit readers who enjoy discussing not just my books, but all books, and anything else on their minds. I’ve got some kickass cool readers. Awesome people who are well versed in a million subjects, and always have great things to add to the conversation. It’s nice to hang with awesome people. Check it out!

Every so often I’ll make a freebie offer. And when I’m looking for beta readers, the RED MEAT LIT Street Team is where I’ll put out the call.

Plus, I respect my readers and trust their views, so I seek their advice on everything from book cover designs to titles for my next books. It’s a great place to be connected. Follow the link immediately below, then on the Facebook page, just find the button that says Join Group and I’ll get you approved as soon as I (or one of the moderators) see the request.

Join the RED MEAT LIT Facebook Group.

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French version of My Brother’s Destroyer Reviewed by Le Monde

I understand Le Monde is one of the largest papers in France. They’ve now reviewed translations of Cold Quiet Country and My Brother’s Destroyer, both quite favorably.

Here is the link.

I don’t read French, but the automatic translation sounds pretty cool:

There are books that are appreciated because they resonate with the actuality, others that we love because, precisely, they are totally inactive. Such is the case of Fred, of Clayton Lindemuth, who could not in any way obey this law of transitivity, which has become a critical facility, coupled with a commercial algorithm: “If you love … you will love …” For, Summer, Cataract City, by Canadian Craig Davidson (Albin Michel, 2014), In memory of Fred would be the only specimen in the generic category of “pitbull fighting, avatted bastons, romantic love and hanging”.

I guess it says I don’t avail myself of the book marketing technique “if you loved x, you’ll love this.” Because there aren’t many books that feature pitbull fighting, avatted bastons, romantic love and hanging.

I don’t know about you, but that’s hilarious.

Just an FYI, I don’t condone dog fighting. The book is a revenge story about a quirky character whose best friend, his dog, is stolen, fought, and left for dead. Evil doesn’t come easy to my protagonist Baer Creighton, but it comes.

I dig the end of the review, too:

One knows the essential: Clayton Lindemuth distills a literature not adulterated, a little foutraque and damn tonic.

Anyone who can give me a fluent translation of this entire review, which I can post, I’ll send you a signed copy of the French version of My Brother’s Destroyer, titled “En Memorie de Fred.” Send me an email via the link on the right side of the page.

 

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Grateful–my 7 top reasons to be grateful on birthday 47

Grateful for Mom and Dad

I turn 47 today, and the first thing on my mind that is different from my last birthday is my mother is gone. Some lose their mothers at younger ages, some older. I’m grateful I had her for 46-plus years, yes, but more grateful she was who she was. In the canyon of loss, it’s difficult to sense the sweeping beauty of the thing that left the hole. But after you climb up the side a little ways, not quite back to where you were, but high enough for perspective, instead of loss you finally see grace. See how amazing your good fortune was.

It’s like that with my mother. I can’t fathom how she turned the wickedness levied against her into such profound good for so many people. I’m grateful it was she, and my father, who made me.

Grateful for Wifeycheez

I’m grateful I get to go through each day married to the woman I chose in 1989, married in 1996, and have been blessed with every day since. Few people get to experience as much love and grace as she gives me every day. I don’t deserve it but I get it, and I’m grateful.

Sometimes I do the dishes to try to show her.

I mow the lawn and build stuff for the house in the wood shop and support her strange diet of vegetables and chicken livers and whatnot all so she knows how grateful I am. Sometimes I show my appreciation by eating cauliflower. It probably doesn’t translate, but I’m a guy, and I refuse to use words. So I hope after 21 years of being formally tied to me, she’s figured it out.

Grateful for Work

MC Hammer said thank you Lord for blessing me with a mind to rhyme and two hype feet. I thank you Lord that my brain and words know how to play together. People in France, the UK, and Australia read my books. I’m grateful for the readers in the US, of course, and especially for that cadre of high school friends who communicate with me about my books. But the fact that people in other parts of the world have found my craft sufficient to keep them turning pages… it’s a mind-boggle for the guy whose first short story featured a polar bear on a block of ice… for two pages.

Somehow it happened, and I’m grateful.

I’m grateful for my career. In my daytime job I help people who don’t understand how money, insurance, or investing really work. I help them get better use of their dollars, save more, reduce risk and improve their results with better strategies. When I first started, all I was able to find in the way of education was company-sponsored sales pitch training. But I learned from other sources and now after all these years, I’m standing exactly where I want to be, with harmony between my values, faith, and daily work. What an amazing blessing to be grateful for.

Grateful for Jimmy Page

I’ve re-discovered Led Zeppelin. Holy shit can Jimmy Page scream on a guitar. I saw a clip where his b-string breaks in the mesmerizing solo of Stairway and instantly–in less than a beat–he shifts the whole solo to a different set of strings and carries on. He translated the solo into another set of fingerings, and it sounds perfect. Jimmy Page, making guitars great again. Anyway, I’ve been listening primarily to Stairway, Going to California, and That’s the Way on the live album, How the West was Won.

It occurs to me that Plato was right, that ideal things exist, and sometimes we get a glimmer. Those chance moments where we glimpse other people achieving perfection gives us faith that although we will probably never know if we personally achieve the ideal, someone has. So we carry on with a crazy mixture of humility and grace, aware that somehow we’re privileged to be part of the group that gets to try, and that’s something separate to be grateful for.

There’s beauty in the moment where you don’t know if your last sentence was Shakespeare or shit.

Grateful for Good… amidst the Evil

There have been quite a few instances over the years where I’ve encountered people close to me who have done bad things. I turned them into fictional monsters and murdered them in my books. It wasn’t as cathartic as I hoped, so I rewrote them and killed them again. Angus Hardgrave, Josephus Bittersmith, Joe Stipe, Senator Cyman.

Somehow the fictional killings never took.

I’m grateful for a turn of events that happened a month ago. I watched a Tony Robbins video on Netflix, then the next suggested video about why people lie, and in the space of a couple of hours realized when I judge someone by their evil, I do myself more harm than them–especially when they’re already dead and buried in my basement.

Just kidding. I didn’t put them in my basement.

I learned that by throwing others under the bus for being evil, I deprive myself of the good they provided over the years; I carry the burden of judgment, meaning, to avoid hypocrisy I have to examine myself at a standard so high I can’t pass muster; I focus on all the evil and bad in the world instead of the good. My God, I am grateful you do the job of judging. I don’t want the job. It sucks. I’m grateful I get to abstain and just soak in all the good that’s out there.

I visited a sinner in a prison and we got along fine. Like two sinners. I think that’s the point of Christian love.

What else am I grateful for on my birthday? I have an appointment about to start in a few minutes. Zeppelin coming through the speakers. I get to go for a run tonight. Having sushi with my wife for my birthday lunch. On and on.

I’m grateful. 

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The BooksGoSocial Quality Mark

I wanted the BooksGoSocial Quality Mark because the first hurdle any author must leap is basic credibility. No matter how many times I read my manuscript, (each goes through at least fifteen full edits,) and no matter how many beta readers give me a thumbs up, I am never as certain about publishing on my own as when my agent loved it, my traditional publisher loved it, and the hired editor loved it. In short, having other super-high quality readers enthusiastically saying “jump” makes me more comfortable on the ledge.

With Solomon Bull, I had edited until I couldn’t find an error or another word to cut. I was happy with the product. But I knew the reader who has never heard of me wouldn’t share my confidence.

I wanted a way to still that nagging perfectionist voice in the back of my head, and a way to demonstrate to potential readers that I’m a freak about quality.

When I stumbled across the BooksGoSocial Quality Mark, it took about thirty seconds to decide to proceed. (At the bottom of this post you can download the 14 page report I received on Solomon Bull, to see what you get.)

For $25 they feed your entire manuscript into AutoCrit, a computer that recognizes all the things our brains are wired to do that actually get in the way of communicating. Then a BooksGoSocial editor reviews the manuscript with living eyeballs and tons of talent.

The report tells us where we’re interfering with our reader’s enjoyment.

AutoCrit analyzes hard-to-find style, repetition, and readability issues that directly impact the success of a novel. The analysis is based on studying millions of successful fiction books.

No computer is yet able to tell whether Hamlet is better than Catch 22. Meaning, you could have a terrible plot and a character arc that hangs like a noose around your neck and the program won’t know.

A slightly more glass-is-half-full way to see it: now I can be confident that if my story has merit, my telling of it won’t get in the way.

My book launch plan involves stages–first, creating a launchpad of credibility. Ideally, I would have submitted the novel before publishing. But since I’m going through an elaborate process of gathering reviews and author blurbs and am considering a paid review service such as Blue Ink or Kirkus, it’s going to be no problem, and much to my advantage, to go back and do one more edit.

In fact, if you’ve ever read any reviews at Kirkus, Blue Ink, Clarion, or Indie Reviews, you’ve probably seen a few where the author could have avoided real pain and gained more insight by spending $25 to have BooksGoSocial show them the way. Instead they paid hundreds and hundreds for the privilege of having a human reviewer hem and haw and try to say nice things while pointing out to those with ears to hear, STAY AWAY FROM THIS NOVEL.

My advice? Whether you’re 100% certain of the quality of your manuscript or not, you can only gain by submitting your manuscript.

If you get a Gold seal, you got a Gold seal. Drink a margarita. You have a number that no one else will ever have. Mine is 1023. I just had it tattooed on my lower back, adjacent the Pittsburgh Steelers logo.

If you get something less, drink a margarita. The report will tell you exactly what you need to fix, and your eventual readers will thank you.

On my report for Solomon Bull, you’ll see that even with a Gold Mark there’s plenty of room for improvement. That’s a good thing because the goal is not to publish a book. It’s to plant an idea, an emotion, a thrill, an earthquake of enlightenment in a reader’s head. Any criticism that removes an obstacle between my brain and my reader’s brain is a wanted criticism.

That said, I have a quibble with one tiny aspect of my report. One of the suggested problems in my text has to do with dialog tags. Anything other than “said” or “asked” gets in the way. I agree–in fact, I usually avoid tags except when necessary to keep the reader aware of who is talking.

The problem? Solomon Bull is told in first person present tense, and I used “says” or “say” 412 times. The computer thought that was bad.

Not a big deal, but it just goes to show you have to take the AutoCrit criticism the same as you’d take from any other person, or non sentient entity, offering advice. You have to be willing to learn, but also to arrive at your own conclusion.

Other than that, I was tickled black and gold by the depth of the analysis. Sentence length, paragraph length, readability, repeated words, phrases, etc.

Check it out here.    Download

Now, I know what you’re thinking. All of this is meaningless unless you can actually see the novel, the pace, style, etc, that the report refers to. You need context. The good news is Solomon Bull is on Kindle Unlimited so you can browse all of it for free. You can also sample the writing from the Kindle page preview. Also, while I’m in the credibility building phase of launch, I’m offering the mobi file or a Kindle gift link to reviewers.

One thing is certain. When I’m done launching Solomon Bull, I’ll absolutely be seeking the BooksGoSocial Quality Mark for my other novels.

I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments section.

All the Best,

–Clayton

PS, Check out this WICKED COOL Trailer, also obtained through BooksGoSocial.

 

http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Solomon_Bull_720p.mp4

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The Most Sexy Literary Character Ever

The cover for Solomon Bull should tell you I targeted a different kind of sexy–hence the motorcycle sans Fabio art. Truth is, the only the time I thought of the word sexy was when I dropped Rachel into the shower scene… more on that below. But sexy doesn’t necessarily mean sex.

Sexy means: Primally interesting. Burrows into the subconscious. Reflects our good back to us. And some of our choicest bad… The sexy character is the one we want to be, or be with. Were I smarter, better looking, and half Blackfoot, I’d like to think I’d be Solomon Bull. He’s a hero worthy of admiration.

So what makes an attraction real? What takes it out of the arena of hormones crashing the gates, and into the I-want-to-read-about-this-character-forever kind of sexy? Several traits come to mind.

 

First trait: Optimists are Sexy

Solomon Bull takes on the impossible because he trusts his cleverness and daring. He accepts a challenge that he can’t knock ten points off an evil senator’s reelection campaign lead, and then proceeds through reckless, monkey wrench adventures that only backfire and increase the incumbent’s lead.

Whether successful in his design to bring down the senator, or not, painting a forty foot elephant with an R on the head, that is laying pipe in a forty foot donkey with a D on the head, on the side of the gargantuan Bell Rock, pictured below, is sexy.

And hanging from a rope to create rock porn requires a fundamental sort of optimism. Also sexy.

 

Second Trait: Sexy Love isn’t about Sex

Solomon isn’t sappy. Not cheesy. Mature love is about thought and understanding, and less about passion. Within the first chapter Solomon becomes aware of thoughtful love—and finds he doesn’t have it. Which forces him away from his newly minted ex girlfriend.

Katrina, who uses real victim-hood as a permanent excuse to avoid responsibility for her life, is worthy of Solomon’s pity, but no longer his love. As the character arc rounds, this exact lesson motivates Solomon to save Amanda, who both stirs his passion and his mind, and the Navajo boy, who is a victim of sexual human trafficking.

 

Third Trait: Sexy Ancestry

Solomon is half Blackfoot Indian. He spent time as a graduate at Arizona State University, mastering among other things indigenous studies, and he is acutely aware of the irony that a Native American would write about the evils of assimilation for an American university on a Mac computer.

He is especially aware because his father was a murdered activist who, in the sixties and seventies, participated in all of the big AIM uprisings, the takeover of Alcatraz, the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the shootout that put Leonard Peltier behind bars.

His father’s mission terrified his white mother. She deployed every sinister trick in a mother’s loving arsenal to undermine Solomon’s indigenous identity. Everything.

Solomon struggles to understand himself. He’s studied both the white man’s most revered philosophers, but also Luther Standing Bear and Ponca Chief White Eagle, who he quotes and frequently draws strength from:

When you are in doubt, be still, and wait; when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, be still; be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists—as it surely will. Then act with courage.

 

Fourth Trait: What’s More Sexy than an Extreme Athlete?

Solomon’s internal struggles motivate his training for the brutal, man-shredding Desert Dog, run through Cholla beds, aqueducts, up sheer rock walls and through clouds of Africanized killer bees.

Solomon desperately wants to be a true Blackfoot, and after all his studies realizes that character is what he does, not what he purports to believe. But how can he do what he wants to do? How can he pick up where his revolutionary father left off? Desert Dog is the litmus test that will tell him whether he’s Wannabe or a Blackfoot.

 

Fifth Trait: A crap ton of crazy adventures, sexy characters, pursuits

Solomon’s external struggles are the fun ones. I might have had more fun fleshing out Rachel than Solomon.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did.

I remember having Solomon return home from a training run, and I hadn’t mapped out much of the actual story yet. I needed something interesting to happen. So while Solomon washes his hair with his eyes closed, he hears the curtain rods slide, feels the cool air, and is introduced to Rachel when he realizes her breast is more “determined” than the pair he remembers attached to his ex’s ribs.

Rachel’s a gorgeous ninja: “some alchemist mixed an anime girl with oxygen and lightning.” She’s always turning up to recruit Solomon into service of the US Treasury’s secret TFI agency, while trying to seduce him. TFI is real, by the way, and what could be more sexy than an anime TFI girl?

The challenge for Solomon is obvious. Not only does he have to resist a seductive beauty, but her recruitment for the US government’s Treasury brings to head his deepest conflict: his father died fighting the US Government. Now the US Government wants him to declare sides, fully assimilate, and defend The Machine. The US Government wants Solomon Bull to be its mule.

Last of the crazy adventures, Solomon learns while bringing down the corrupt Senator Cyman that his evil is far beyond table-stakes political corruption. He’s a rapist and pedophile. Very un-sexy. Interestingly, I wrote the drafts of Solomon Bull long before Pizzagate, but it’s kind of remarkable how close I was to the mark. Turns out, like we knew all along, sick bastards are everywhere, maybe especially in government.

 

Final Trait: Smart is Sexy.

One other thing makes me want to be Solomon Bull. He’s way smarter than I am.

I didn’t dumb him down. An ARC reader suggested to me that the average reader’s understanding level is eighth grade, but I wrote like I swallowed a dictionary. I think that’s a bit generous. My vocabulary is below average. But I’ve paid attention the last thirty years, not a mile wide, but a mile deep, and I had a lot of fun tapping some of that esoterica, letting Solomon go to town and be himself. Some of his humor is frankly un-gettable. But most is accessible. The humor is structured so when you don’t get it, you won’t know you missed it. But when you’re in, you’ll know.

And tell me that ain’t sexy.

What do you think? Who was the sexiest literary character you ever read, and what character attributes made it so?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section, and while you’re at it, consider signing up to receive a single email the next time I release a novel.

 

Buy a sexy paper copy on Amazon.
Buy a sexy Kindle Version.

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Alice in Wonderland Review

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You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Albert Camus

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LOVE WHAT YOU DO. DO WHAT YOU LOVE

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'Alice in Wonderland' Rated and Review

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Plot
8








Words Choice
7








Ending
8













7.7
Average Score

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