Martin Roy Hill's Blog, page 13

Review: Whitley Strieber's "The Grays"

I've been reading a lot of science fiction lately. My renewed interest in readiing sci-fi reflects my writing interests, as I am moving away from pure mystery and suspense to more futuristic and dystopian genres. So I recently picked up an audio version of Whitley Strieber's "The Grays."
 
I was a big fan of  Strieber's "Communion" books, but I have never read any of his ficition. This book, though not new,  looked like a good bet, considering my interests in UFOs. That interest stems from my belief that, as Shakespeare wrote, " There is more between heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy."
 
In this work of fiction, Strieber takes the whole of UFO lore and wraps it up in a story about a dying race of aliens and a dying earth. Grays (both short and tall), Nordic aliens, black triangles, glowing orbs, abuctions and implants -- Strieber has it all. For good measure, he throws in a group of corrupt corporate leaders called "The Trust" who wish to hasten the end of the human race so they can rebuild it in their own DNA image.

Streiber is an elegant and colorful writer, and his characters are believable and sympathetic. I thoroughly enjoyed the book until the climatic end. I felt it was heavy handed and overdone. The idea that a renegade government operator could singlehandedly turn an entire town into a pack of violent, mindless zombies, or the sight of a corporate demigod flying an invisible airship down Pennsylvania Avenue wreaking devastion on Washington, DC -- well, it strained even my willing suspension of disbelief.

Fortunately, Strieber made up for it with his epilogue. If he hadn't, I would have only given this three stars. Instead, I give four. ****

Review: "Chopper Music," by Jay Allan Storey

Jackson Reilly is a loser, a chopper-riding, strip-joint bouncer drowning in a sea of drugs and booze. By his own admission, he feels like a jig-saw puzzle missing a piece. But when his estranged mother dies, Jackson finds himself drawn back into the world of classical and jazz music – his parents’ world and one he had run away from years before. Slowly, painfully, the music pulls Jackson out of the morass that he lives in until he realizes he has found the missing piece of the puzzle that is his life.
Author Jay Allan Storey’s novella, “Chopper Music,” provides a delicately painted landscape of strip joints and concert halls, beer mugs and tea cups, strippers and ladies. Jackson Reilly is hardly a man you would want to befriend, but with Storey’s writing it is impossible not to find yourself cheering him on, cursing him when he falls, and cheering again as he rallies to find his place in the world – at the keyboard of a jazz piano. “Chopper Music” is a quick, addictive read, and an enjoyable one, too.
I give it four stars. ****

Mystery Great Robert Wade Passes

Robert Wade, one of the great hardboiled mystery writers, passed away this week at age 92. With his writing partner, H. Billy Miller, Bob authored dozens of tough thrillers from the end of WWII to the 1970s. The duo wrote under many different pennames, depending on who published their books. The best known aliases were Wade Miller and Whit Masterson. Many of their books were made into movies, including "Badge of Evil," which became the film noir classic "Touch of Evil," starring Orson Welles and Charlton Heston. 
I was very lucky to know Bob. Even more than lucky: I'm married to his daughter, Winke. He will be missed.
If you would like to learn more about Bob and H. Billy, check this out this link: The Men Who Were Wade Miller.

Tips for Publishing on Kindle Direct

Those who serve or work for the military talk in terms of
"lessons learned." In any operation, successful or not, you can learn
lessons to improve your effort next time around. Well, I have lessons learned
about publishing an e-book for Amazon's Kindle reader.

When I prepared my book "Duty," I was
concentrating on the print edition. Neither my wife nor I have any kind of
e-reader, though we've talked about getting them. (We have no more room on our
bookshelves.) So, when Amazon’s Createspace asked if I wanted to publish “Duty”
in a format for Kindle, I had no idea what I was doing. I just assumed
Createspace’s print template would automatically translate into the Kindle
template.

There’s another old military saying: “Never assume anything,
because it makes an ass out of you and an ass out of me.”

When I first previewed the book’s Kindle version, I really
had no idea what I was looking at. All I knew was that the formatting looked
strange. The indents were too large and there were strange numbers here and
there.

It took me some hunting around on the Kindle Direct
Publishing help site before I learned what was wrong. According to its
instruction, which you can find here,
I needed remove all tab characters and have Word insert automatic indentions. I
also had to strip out all of the page numbers and headers, as well as the table
of contents.  I recreated the TOC by
bookmarking each story’s title (i.e., the chapter titles), and then link the
bookmark to a hyperlink on the corresponding name in the TOC.

Amazon recommends saving the book file as a filtered web
page. But when I did that, and imported it into Kindle Direct, the result was a
large body of unseparated text. I reverted to a Word document format and imported
that. Success!

Lesson learned: Don’t assume you know what you’re doing.
Read the instruction first. Duh!

 

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my writer’s blog.



As you probably know from my site, my name is Martin Roy Hill and I am the author of “Duty: Suspense and Mystery Stories from the Cold War and Beyond,” a collection of new and previously published short stories.



A little background on myself: I was journalist for more than twenty years. I covered crime for a daily newspaper, spent eight years as an investigative journalist for a magazine, and ten years as editor of a business newspaper. I also free-lanced a lot. First I focused on first hard news for publications like LIFE and Newsweek. Later, however, I began to concentrate on military history, a subject I enjoy reading and writing about.



I also wrote short stories. Even got some published.



For a while after 9/11, I was on active duty with the Coast Guard as part of Operation Noble Eagle, the nationwide homeland security mission. I realized I no longer enjoyed journalism and began looking for another career. Because I had a background in emergency field medicine from reserve service in the military and law enforcement, I got hired as a Navy analyst in combat medical capabilities. Within weeks, the war in Iraq started and my new career didn’t leave much time for writing.



About two years ago, the “op tempo” at work began to lighten up and I started writing again. Today, I write an Open Salon blog on politics with a historical view. I also articles on military history for Suite101.com and some magazines. And I started writing fiction again.



Then I heard about indie authors and publishing, and thought, “Why not?” So now I am the author of a short story collection and working on getting a novel ready for publication. So stop by now and then. I hope through this blog I can provide some insight on the experiences of a newbie indie author. Perhaps we can exchange some tips on writing and publishing. Who knows? We might even become famous in the process!