Marc Liebman's Blog, page 42

Life’s Changing Conversations

Ever notice that as you get older, the nature/topics of your conversations with other adults changes. For example, when you are in college, its all about the opposite sex, grades (how good or how to stay in school), booze, parties, and if you are into them, sports and cars. Future careers also plays a big part as well as the job search during your last year.

Move into your twenties, and now its all about your job, future career moves, dating or if you’re married, about maybe starting a family. If, when kids arrive, then the focus shifts to them.

In your thirties and forties, the dialogues are pretty much the same. Some go down the divorce road, dating, adapting to a new normal, but for the most part, it is still about kids, careers, schools, home improvement, etc. etc. etc.

The next big evolution comes in one’s mid to late forties. Some make career changes, empty nesting is on the horizon along with college tuition payments. Life is good because you are having adult conversations with your kids. Around this time, one of life’s tough challenges – end of life issues presented by your parents. For many it is the first time they face their own mortality and bring a new perspective because either consciously or sub-consciously you begin to realize there are two road ends rushing toward you – your retirement and ultimately, your death.

Fast forward into your fifties and sixties. Hopefully you are successful and success isn’t necessarily defined by the size of your portfolio, but it helps. A larger portfolio gives you options, one of which is the psychic satisfaction to make the absolute right decision at your job instead of a politically correct one and if challenged by a superior, the freedom to tell him to f—k off.

The fifth and sixth decades of life present physical, mental and medical that become the topics of conversations. You become even more conscious of how the aging process is affecting you. If you’re lucky, you manage to get to your mid-to late sixties without major health crisis, e.g. a heart attack, bleeding ulcers, a bout with cancer or some other life threatening disease. All of this drives what we talk about with friends and family.

Once you get into your seventies, dinner conversations with friends are often dominated by comparing doctors, treatments for similar ailments, and other medical issues. They’re mixed in with those about children and grandchildren that can be good stories about promotions, new jobs recently arrived grand babies to tragic tales of mental health problems, bad marriages, even premature deaths and suicides.

It is all a reminder that as much as we think we are immortal, we’re not. A shrink might tell you that it is a way the sub-conscious is subtly preparing you for the ultimate end.

This isn’t meant to be morbid, but just an observation about conversations I seem to be having with friends. Just so you know, I’ve become dyslexic about my age. Subtracting the year I was born from 2018 indicates that technically, I am seventy-three but in my mind, I’m just thirty-seven!

Marc Liebman

September 2018

Which of Your Kids Do You Like Best?

Often people stopping by my table and looking at the six books ask me “Which one is my favorite book?” That’s a tough one to answer because it is akin to asking a parent who is his or her favorite child?   The flippant answer is that I like them all!

So after saying that, then how does the conversation go? It varies, but what follows are the questions and short versions of my answers. Part of the trick is not to give away the plot.

What do you like in a book? If they like lots of hair raising flying scenes or wanted to know what it is like to fly a helicopter in a combat rescue, I point to Big Mother 40 and Cherubs 2. There’s also a night ditching a helicopter and dodging surface-to-air missiles in a Piper Navajo in Inner Look. Render Harmless has sneak and peak into the Soviet Union that, from a flying perspective, gets “entertaining.”

Do you like interesting characters? All the books have them, but the most interesting ones are in Forgotten and Render Harmless. In Forgotten, the wife of one of the POWs who gets left behind at the end of the Vietnam War is a member of the Student For the Democratic Society’s Action Wing. After her husband was shot down and captured, she is sent to Cuba to learn how to be an assassin. In Render Harmless, you meet a German SS officer forced to investigate his comrades, a Luftwaffe ace who hasn’t lost his love for Adolph Hitler and a German paratrooper who loses his moral compass.

Which do you prefer spy/espionage thrillers or counter terrorism yarns? Those who like spy stories will usually buy Inner Look or Moscow Airlift. For lovers of counter terrorism stories, Render Harmless fills the bill.

If these answers don’t help, its time to switch gears. Moscow Airlift and Inner Look are in many ways, books about revenge. Cherubs 2 is a novel about leadership and the fine line between being a coward and overly cautious. Big Mother 40 is a book about love, friendship and persistence and oh by the way, the good guys have to shut down a secret missile base in North Vietnam run by a North Vietnamese and Soviet officer whose governments are pushing different agendas.

Which one is the best seller? That’s easy. Big Mother 40 outsells them all at events and through distribution. The one is second or third place always varies and is, I’ve decided, beyond my modeling capabilities to predict.

Here’s the bad news. I have more “book children” coming and it is going to make the answer more difficult because it’ll be, when I’m done writing, a big family. I already have six ‘kids,’ I mean books and a seventh on the way.

Marc Liebman

September 2018

Why I sit at a Kroger All Weekend…

No, I am not held captive at a Kroger for eight hours a day and forced to shop. As noted in an earlier post, I’m at selected local, as in DFW Metro Area Krogers part of their regional author program. I’m not sure if it is available outside Texas and joining it seemed liked a good idea as a way of helping to sell a few books. It was a new (to me) and different channel I thought, worth a try.

My expectation was that I would sell about fifteen to twenty books per weekend. So far, the average is closer to twenty-three and five other good things other than direct sales have happened.

One, increasing the size of my newsletter mailing list. Everyone who stops by and who seems interested in my books is asked if they would like to get my monthly newsletter even though they don’t by one. Rarely does the person say no. On average, newsletter mailing list goes up by twenty to twenty-five names a weekend.

Two, speaking engagements. In each weekend, some has stopped by my table and asked if I do public speaking. These have become speaking engagement leads and all have been booked. They too turn into guess what? More book sales.

Three, e-book and additional sales. Most who stop take my literature – postcards, bookmarks and a two pager that gives seven reasons why someone should read the Josh Haman series. It also has links to my pages on Amazon, Goodreads, my blog and my website. Others ask me if my books are available for a Kindle. After every weekend, I can look on Amazon and see a bump sales. Are they directly the result of me sitting at a Kroger, I don’t know. What I can’t tell until I get my royalty reports is how many are hard copy or e-book, but I don’t care.

Four, publicity. Kroger doesn’t do anything for the author, but I meet many who ask about my books, the publishing process and who knows what and a host of other questions. Again, it’s a positive way to get the word out that a local author has good books to sell.

Five, the nice people. In many ways this is the best part. Let’s face it, it’s a bit of an ego trip to meet someone interested in my babies, I mean my books!!! So, now you know why I sit at a Kroger on the average of one weekend every six weeks.

Marc Liebman

August, 2018

Current Works in Process

It is time for a quick overview of what’s still in my laptop that are a work in process or put another way, books to be written and published. Here’s the list and the status.

The Simushir Island Incident.   It is scheduled to be published by Penmore Press later this year and is the last book in the Josh Haman series.

Gold and Silver Wings – Tales from Three Generation of Military Aviators. It is a collection of stories from my father’s, my son’s and my aviation careers that don’t appear in official reports. Some of the stories will make you smile or laugh, some will make you cry and others you’ll wonder what were they thinking. The first draft of the manuscript has been completed and the book proposal and is with a literary agency who has agreed to represent it.

Flight of the Pawnee, MANPADS, The Ass’m Draggin’, and Strawberry 9. These four books comprise a new contemporary counterterrorism/espionage series that take place starting in 2015 with Derek Almer as the main character. The first novel – Flight of the Pawnee – is ready to send to a publisher and I’m currently editing MANPADS. It will take one or two more passes before it is “finished.” The Ass’m Draggin’ and Strawberry 9 are just concepts now and it would take me two to three months to write a first draft and three more to polish either one into a manuscript that could go to a publisher. The series is with the same agency that has Gold and Silver Wings.

Retribution. It’s the story of four men – an American Air Force pilot; a German who escaped Nazi Germany in the thirties; a wanted Nazi war criminal; and Soviet NKVD officer – and how their lives slowly intertwine. The manuscript is close to being ready to go to a publisher.

Red Star of Death. The Cuban intelligence agency, the CIA and the Mossad want to entice Janet Pulaski out of her quiet retirement and the FBI wants to put her in jail. She finds a cause to believe in so she can again, ride off into the sunset. Ditto the status of Retribution.

Hannenkam and Outsourced haven’t passed beyond the concept stage. The title for Hannenkam comes from one of the major races on the Alpine Skiing World Cup Championship series and is a novel about an American ski racer with Olympic dreams. He’s dating an Austrian ski racer who’s father has an ugly past.  Outsourced will be a novel about a consultant advising a client during the provider selection process. The hero has to deal with an unethical competitor, a corrupt procurement director, hidden agendas of corporate executives and the sales tactics used by the providers. Some are offbeat, some shady and some are outright dumb.

So that’s current list of eight and should keep me busy over the next few years.

Marc Liebman

August 2018

Unfamiliar Writing Assignments Part Deux

A couple of weeks ago, the post was about writing synopses for the Derek Almer series of books. Mind you only one Flight of the Pawnee –was a finished product. Another – MANPADS – was written but needs work before it is ready to go to a publisher. Two – The Ass’m Draggin’ and Strawberry 9 – are yet to be outlined, much less written. The exercise was very helpful because it helped me think through the story lines of the two books and changed the order of the last two and how they will appear in the series.

My next conversation with my agent led to another challenging writing assignment. She’s part of a larger group that includes a production company that is looking for material for movies and TV mini-series. The group prefers published books. My assignment – synopses of the seven books in the Josh Haman series and a separate document on my thoughts (recommendations?) on which ones would be better as a stand-alone movie and which ones would make a great mini-series.

To be honest, I’m willing to bet that most authors would like their books to be a New York Times Bestseller and be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. I’d fall into that group but then reality strikes. It hasn’t happened yet and I’d be happy just to make money. If one is made into a movie or a TV or mini-series, it will be a dream come true. I’m just not holding my breath!

Creating the document about which book would be best suited to a movie or mini-series was one hardest writing assignments I’ve ever taken on. I had no idea of how to do it.

It took several attempts over several days before ones and zeros representing words and letters appeared on my laptop’s screen. Slowly the document came together. Then it was re-organized. Sections were added; others deleted or combined. Now it is almost done.

It has a chart showing which characters appear and re-appear in each novel. Another one has a book-by-book overview of themes and cultural issues that are addressed.

Then there are two that are episode by episode breakdowns with the events and the characters. One is based solely on the Forgotten. The second is a combination of Cherubs 2 and Big Mother 40.

Question one is it good enough? Hopefully, it will start a discussion about which book should be done and how. Question two, will they buy the rights to one or more or even better, the whole series.

Stay tuned. I’ll find out in a few months.

Marc Liebman

August 2018

Mind Matters

A lot of ‘things’ affect the creative process. The brain is a complex muscle that has to be exercised and fed physically by food. It also has to be fed psychologically.

Events in our lives are what I will call stimuli, i.e. encourage it and get the brain ‘excited’ so that it wants to work hard. Others are ‘drags’ that tire it out.

Three drags may have gotten to me. During the past three years, three months and twenty-two days, we – that’s fourteen – home owners have been pressuring builder and developer of our houses to fix a major drainage problem. We were trying to do it without going to court. The process has had its emotional ups and downs as the process zigged and zagged. Finally, this past Friday we came to an agreement on the legal terms, scope of the work and money.

One would think my brain would be ecstatic and wanting to run out and celebrate. Or, I would feel relieved. Instead, my brain was just tired.

Drag two was two separate but related events, i.e. we had to euthanize two of our dogs about six weeks apart. Rowley was within weeks of his 15th birthday and had a stroke. He could no longer walk so the decision was easy. I sat in the room at the vet balling as they put down one of the smartest animals I’ve have ever had the pleasure of knowing, much less owning.

Rickey – was my wife’s snuggle buddy for the past 15 and a half years. He was the smartest animal I’ve ever known. He suffered from the canine version of Alzheimer’s, was going blind and was already deaf. One of the bi-products of the disease is that he didn’t know where he is most of the time. He was pooping and peeing in the house so we had to put him down. I loved the dog as did my wife and we both sat their crying.

It has been a month or so since we put Rowley down and I’m still grieving. We have one dog left – Rudy – and while he is personable, fun, smart and all those things a good dog should be, he’s not Rowley or my wife’s Rickey.

Yesterday, I was at a book signing at a local Kroger Supermarket yesterday as part of the their author’s program. Normally, between visits by prospective buyers, I am working on something.

Not yesterday. I stared at the laptop and was forcing myself to write. Late in the morning, I gave up. The creative juices just weren’t there. My brain was tired or maybe I was simply depressed. Who knows? Do I care? Yes. Writing is a “volunteer” business, i.e. I volunteered to become an author and have to work through it all because I have stuff to write and deadlines to meet so this blog is hopefully the first step back. Thanx for reading.

Marc Liebman

August 2018

Writing is my OCD

According to the National Institute of Health, OCD – obsessive compulsive disorder – is a common, chronic and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over.

Yup, I got it and the behavior is called writing. Uncontrollable, recurring thoughts. I am always thinking about a manuscript, whether I am editing it, creating one or daydreaming about one I haven’t written. Or, it could a blog post like this one or my next newsletter. My mind is constantly working on something I am either about to write or have written. That could be an obsession!

Behaviors. Hmmmmmm. I take my laptop anywhere where I may have to wait. Waiting for a haircut, or my turn at the DMV or take-out, my MacBook Pro is opened and I dive in, oblivious to the world and get a few precious minutes writing. Others in line do things on their phone or stare into space or watch TV. Me, I dive into whatever I’m working on.

In the evening, unless I am really into a TV show, my computer is on my lap and I am either editing, outlining, writing. It is not just keeping up with the blizzard of emails I get, but it is on a book, blog post or my monthly newsletter.

My wife’s noticed. I get the “do you every put that thing (e.g. my laptop) down?” Or, “You do nothing other than bury your nose in your laptop …” I do eat, sleep, exercise, go to book signings, give talks, etc. and go to the bathroom.

What I have noticed is that my OCD has gotten worse as I got older. I just turned seventy-three and can hear the clock ticking. How many productive years do I have left? That thought sends me back to the laptop because I have so many more books I want to write before I’m done. My list of books that I’d like to see published is now at eleven, not including The Simushir Island Incident due out this fall. Some are already written, many are just concepts.

Is it healthy? It keeps my mind active which is important. Other retirees focus on different activities. I retired to write.

Is it unhealthy and done at the exclusion of everything else. No. But is it in first place? Oh yeah!

Writers write. Is it a form of OCD? A shrink would have to make that diagnosis. Meanwhile, it is back to my next book.

Marc Liebman

July 2018

New Unfamiliar Writing Tasks

Working with an agent leads to a whole new set of tasks for both fiction and non-fiction books that are new to me. On the non-fiction list, my agent asked me to update the proposal for Gold & Silver Wings – Tales from Three Generations of Military Pilots while she was on vacation. Actually, the work was self-generated because unlike most non-fiction book proposals, the author writes the first two or three chapters and provides a detailed table of contents with outlines of the remaining sections. Instead of chapters there are excerpts from throughout the manuscript. And, since the first draft is now more or less complete, she suggested that I update the table of contents as well as the proposal. This task is now completed.

For the Derek Almer series of books, she asked me to provide a synopsis of the series and then two page synopses of the first three books. They were harder to write than I thought given the constraints I was given.

Originally, I tried to write the series synopsis first. That was a mistake. After I wrote the ones for the first three books – Flight of the Pawnee, MANPDADS and The Ass’m Draggin’ – my original concept to the series synopsis changed.

It would be redundant to cut and paste précis of each synopsis into the series synopses document. Instead, the document gives a publisher six reasons why readers will buy the books along with a hint on how it could become a longer series. After all, it is as much about the marketability of the books as it is about the writing and the story.

The two pages is more of a constraint that one would think, but required elements are the genre BISAC Code, one or two sentence bios on the primary antagonist (bad guy), protagonist (good guy), details on the plot and status of the manuscript. BISAC Codes are six digit numbers used by the industry to classify books. They were created because, unlike the Dewey Decimal System used in libraries, it was designed for computer.

The last asked for document was a summary of all the books I have in work. There are, if one includes the five listed in this post, four more – The Red Star of Death, Retribution, Hannenkam, and Outsourced. The first two are written and I’ve edited them a couple of times but they both still need work. The latter two exist only in a rough story/plot outline. Hopefully, they will be published sometime in the future.

Its been a busy week or so writing on everything but a book!

Marc Liebman

July 2018

How You Know You Are Really Getting Old

One of my favorite expressions is “life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes!” We all age and deal with it because there is no other attractive alternative.

My dad used to say that he didn’t mind the creaking, cracking joints when he got up because it was a reminder that he was alive. Lots of things make us feel old, such as celebrating one of your kid’s forty-fifth birthday.

Or, not being able to sleep through the night without at least one trip to the bathroom. There’s a whole laundry list of daily reminders our bodies give us as we age. But what really makes me feel old are things that remind me, as they said in the opening to the TV show The Lone Ranger, the days of yesteryear.

When I was growing up, my father used to take me to aviation museums and often would point out airplanes he flew. They all had propellers and most had fabric covered control surfaces. I’d look at them with interest because I wanted to become an Air Force pilot or Naval Aviator, but couldn’t really relate because they were from his generation.

Going through his logbooks, I learned that during his Air Force career, he flew 27 different types of airplanes, not just different versions of the same one. No wonder there were so many in museums!

In my Naval Aviation career, I flew just six! My son flew just three in his.

So now, when I go to an aviation museum, I look at the airplanes and helicopters I flew and record the bureau numbers. Or, a person who visited my website and owns a T-28 or T-34 will send me an email asking if I flew their airplane. In one case I did, and I sent him copies of the pages in my logbook as provenance.

Last summer, the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola announced it was unveiling an SH-2F with the bureau number of 151312 this coming October. Into my logbook I went and sure enough, the helicopter was there as a UH-2C. It was originally built as a single engine A model, was converted to the twin engine C which I flew before being sent back to be modified into an F.

I haven’t added up the hours I spent in the pilot or co-pilot’s seat but it was one of our detachment helicopters on a round the world cruise on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. America that included seven months off Vietnam during the war in S.E. Asia.

The America is now a reef off Cape Hatteras and 151312 will live on in a museum. So now, something that I actually flew is in a museum. Someday, I hope to show it to one of my grandkids and point out that not only did your grandfather fly that type, but THAT ONE is in my logbook. Kinda makes you feel really old! Happy, too.

Marc Liebman

July 2018

What I Hate About Traveling in an RV

Let me make this clear, we like traveling in our RV. It not the fastest way to go, but you bring your hotel room with you. The bed is always comfortable, the kitchen is right down the hall so you can browse through the refrigerator in your underwear and like home, you have a choice – cook or go out.

You don’t pack for an RV trip, you load it up and go. Suitcases aren’t needed. And, you travel on your own schedule. You don’t have to get to the airport an hour or so before the flight, wait in security and then get jammed into a seat with 150 or more strangers before you reverse the process, pick-up a rental car and check into a hotel..

There are disadvantages. It doesn’t float so you can’t take it across the ocean. Another is that you plod along at 60 – 65 mph. We flat tow a car, so sixty-five is fastest we can go. Our thirty-six foot long Winnebago Class A RV is too big to fit in our driveway, so it has to be stored. Ours is in a facility about three miles away. Last, its like a house or a boat, there’s always something to do on it.

There are two things we really don’t like. One are the idiot drivers in cars who think nothing of cutting an RV or truck off at merges or while we are trying to pass a slower car or truck. Slamming on the brakes in a 30,000 pound vehicle only starts it slowing. It takes awhile for it to stop and swerving isn’t in the cards. Twice on the way home yesterday, we were cut off where construction had the road moving from two lanes to one. A blast from our air horn expresses our frustration.

Number two is unpacking the RV at the end of a trip. We’ve learned how to minimize the clothes we bring, but it still has to be brought into the house, along with the human and dog food, meds, toiletries and other incidentals that one can take when one travels in one’s second home. Once inside, it all has to be put away.

It is like moving! Oh, and the RV then has to be cleaned before it is put away for the next trip. Ours, with the slides out, is a 440 square foot apartment. It doesn’t take long to vacuum, Swiffer the floors, but it is something that has to be done. A friend of mine told me that the end of trip process is why they now live in their RV full time! We’ve thought about it too!

Besides that, it is a very relaxing way to travel and not that expensive. Next trip is already planned and we’ll be gone for a month. More in a later post.

 

Marc Liebman

July 2018