Marc Liebman's Blog, page 48

Prisoner of the Microphone

Yesterday, I was at the Western Museum of Flight as the guest speaker to give what I call my “Grandpa, what did you do during the Vietnam War?” speech. The museum, located in Torrance, CA publicized my presentation as part of the museum’s ongoing Celebrity Lecture Series where people come in and talk about their experience in aviation. So I was honored to be one of the speakers and I got to meet an old friend.

The old friend was a T-28B owned by David Hill, a retired Delta Airlines Captain and a museum member, flew in his T-28B and I got to climb into the cockpit. The avionics had been modernized but inside the cockpit, it had a very familiar smell of burned fuel and oil only radial engines make. This particular T-28 spent some time in Laos before it was brought home. The plane was pristine and brought back many memories of flying my favorite airplane.

I enjoy public speaking and the event was a chance to sell a few books. Another reason I was excited about the opportunity because it was going to be recorded. It wasn’t about ego, but more about needing to build my “reel” for my budding career as a professional speaker. I’d like to see what I looked and sounded like in front on audience so I can, as they love to say in the sports world, improve.

Normally, when I give presentations, I have a hand mike wired to the system or one that is wireless. Or better yet, a wireless one clipped to my shirt. Either way, I can walk around and not be chained to the podium. I find this helps me connect better with the audience and make me a much more dynamic, effective speaker.

At the museum, the set-up was different. The mike for the audience, which numbered about two hundred was clipped to my shirt. The mike being used by the videographer was mounted on the podium. They only had one camera and I was asked to stay at the podium and not move around.

Next challenge. The large flat panel displays were next to, but not behind me. So, now I couldn’t walk around and couldn’t point to the screen with either a laser pointer or my hand. The solution was to say in the upper left of the screen you can see…..”

So, like the way many flying stories start, “there I was in the helicopter, with a transmission chip light, one hydraulic system had failed and dumped hydraulic fluid all over the cabin….” this speaking story will start with “there I was, a prisoner of the microphone in front of an audience eager to hear what I have to say…”

It was fun and the presentation was very well received. I’ll get a CD with the presentation and some pictures. And, I sold a lot of books. Being a prisoner of the microphone wasn’t so bad after all.

Marc Liebman

July 2017

Word Count Blues

One question I’m often asked is how many words are in the book? The flippant answer is enough to tell the story…

The real answer is more is much, much more complicated. In one of the many writing workshops I attended a long time ago, the “experts” emphatically stated 80,000 words was the max a publisher would accept. So, believing them, I stuck with the number and the results weren’t very satisfying because the electronic trash was full of historical details to give the story context; tidbits about each major and supporting character to make him or her interesting; scene setting to say nothing of the number of passages.

The reason behind this limitation is cost. The longer the book, the more pages in the published version, the higher the cost to print it and the longer it takes the editor and proofreader to go through it. And, to some people in this Internet age, thick books like War and Peace, Hawaii and Taipan are intimidating.

For the record, the shortest of my novels – Cherubs 2 – is about 120,000 words and at 197,000, the national award winning Forgotten is the longest. Big Mother 40 and Inner Look are in the 150,000 range and Render Harmless is about 174,000.

To me, word count is determined by how many are needed to tell the story to my satisfaction. What’s interesting is the word count fluctuates during my first edit of the manuscript all the way to the point the book is ready to be published. As I flesh out, edit, add and delete passages, the word count goes up and down despite my efforts to drive the number down.

Here’s an example. I’m in the final throes of getting Moscow Airlift ready to go to a publisher. When I started editing and re-writing the manuscript, it was north of 157,000 words and was, even to me, too long. In a hard look at the plot, one of the plot threads went into the trash and whole passages were deleted and others trimmed. The word count dropped to around 152,000.

The changes drove more editing, adding some character development and historical context and so now I am back in the 154 – 155,000 range which is where I think Moscow Airlift will finish.

Am I obsessing about the word count? No. Am I cognizant of it? Yes. It will be what it will be and that is the end of the word count story.

Marc Liebman

July 2017

Thoughts on the Fourth of July

My first thought was to take the day off and not write an entry. Then I thought, I’ll pen a few sentences on the what this day means to me. So here goes.

The Fourth of July is the day we celebrate our declaration of independence from our colonial masters. Historically, it is significant because besides leading to a war lasting until 1783. Most people don’t realize the Battle of Lexington and Concord was fought in April 1775, fourteen months before the document we know as the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Since then it has been an interesting 242 years. This country grew and prospered and became the world’s predominant superpower. The road was bumpy filled with recessions, wars, blunders and mistakes, racism, dumb laws, and more. But in the end, we, as a country succeeded like no other nation has. I often remind people that democracy is a messy process. It is always a work in process and eventually, we get it pretty close to right.

Despite our internal issues, we are still the world’s greatest economic power and people still want to live in this country because of the freedom it offers. Few countries offer the opportunities the United States does.

This freedom has not been without cost. More than two million, eight hundred and fifty-two thousand American men and women have been killed, wounded or are missing in action. Those are just numbers and do not account for the pain and suffering of the families who lost loved ones or whose lives were irreparably changed by their wounds. Nor does it account for the sacrifices many made to make this country great.

We should celebrate the Fourth of July. It is not just another reason to have a sale. So while we celebrate the Fourth of July, we should take a moment to give thanks to all those who came and went before us and made this holiday possible.

Marc Liebman

July 2017

Manuscript Resurrection Part III

Excitement is the best word I can use to describe my feelings about the latest version of Moscow Airlift. An appropriate phrase would be “it is getting there.”

In the re-worked novel, I’ve bring back characters from prior books and put them together in an unlikely place – Moscow – at a difficult time in Russian history – the collapse of the Soviet Union. The majority of the book takes place in the months after Desert Storm and the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991. The Soviet Union is in political and social turmoil because the newly elected Russian Parliament and Mikhail Gorbachev want to dissolve the Soviet Union and create the Russian Federation as an attempt to mollify the Soviet Socialist Republics by giving them more independence. Keep in mind that by this time, the Berlin Wall has come down, German reunification happened in March 1990 and the Warsaw Pact has dissolved. The Soviet empire created under Stalin has evaporated and the country is no longer a superpower.

And remember, the Iranians, through their proxies – Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah – began killing Americans with 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut Airport and then the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut in 1984. In the summer of 1991, the events of 9/11 are still ten years in the future. At the time, no one in the U.S. realized we were at war with radical Islam.

All this is historical context and backdrop to Moscow Airlift’s plot, i.e. the Iranians want to acquire nuclear weapons they can use to threaten and maybe attack Israel and the U.S. and Soviet hardliners who want to thwart Gorbachev’s plans to re-invent the Soviet Union as the Russian Federation. And, the Soviet Union is broke and needs to buy food from the West to supplement its commitments under the recently concluded Soviet-American Grain Agreement.

In addition to some interesting new characters, the plot is driven by the actions and seen through the eye of:

Oleg Krasnovsky now a major general in the KGB. He was a colonel stationed in East Germany in Render Harmless;
Nikolai Volkov a KGB lieutenant general who first surfaced in Inner Look but as you’ll find out, had a major influence in Josh Haman’s life;
Daniel Debenard and her father, Jacques, who Josh met in Cherubs 2; and
Andrew Goode, the FBI agent in Inner Look.

Josh, even after all these years, is still haunted by the murder of his first wife Natalie (in the beginning of Render Harmless) by the KGB and his suppressed desire to avenge her death. Danielle and her father spend almost four years in a Pathet Lao re-education camp where a Soviet officer repeatedly rapes Danielle’s sister Gabrielle. They want justice!

More I won’t write (say?) about the plot because it gives too much away. And, since I’m not finished with the re-do, things could change in the manuscript. As I said in the beginning, I’m now excited about the book and can’t wait to finish it and send it to a publisher.

Marc Liebman

June 2017

Value of a Cast of Characters

One of the challenges in writing a novel, particularly one with several different plot threats is naming the characters. Picking names gets more difficult when the individuals are not born and raised in the U.S. As one gets farther from Anglo-Saxon countries – U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K. – the degree of difficulty goes up.

Immigration, e.g. someone from let’s say India who immigrated to Canada, adds to the challenge. Where it gets exponentially more difficult is when there are language and cultural differences in how parents name their children.

A question I get asked is how do I come up with the names. In some cases, particularly if they are from Anglo-Saxon countries, the name literally pops into my head. Sometimes I go to the Internet and enter in ‘common last names in country XYZ’ into Google and start reading.

Creating a character with foreign names is more complex, but the process I follow is the same. Wikipedia generally has the etymology on how the names in a culture have evolved over time and that is very helpful.

Once I have a feel for the naming “convention,” I start reading through the names. Sometimes I start with the first name, other times I start with the last. And, I look for the meaning of the name if I think it is important to help describe the character.

The process does have its hazards. One mistake I made that almost got into print was that for a Russian male character who was a KGB general, I had an “a” at the end of his name. The ‘a’ turned his name from being male to female…. Whoops! Thankfully Volkova became Volkov before the book was printed.

So names can be a minefield. Another mistake I’ve managed to avoid is using the same first name for two different characters. It sounds simpler than it is because as one is writing, sometimes Steve ABC and Stephen XYZ sound and read right.

The solution to two names is relatively simple. As I write each manuscript, I create a cast of characters. In it, I have the individual’s name as I want it spelled along of every named character along with their rank or title. For the ones who appear more often I include a short bio. The listing stays in the manuscript until just before I submit it to a publisher.

During the writing and proofreading process, it is a handy tool because it is THE source on the character. So, in Inner Look, Dianne stayed with two ‘n’s and ChristiAnna was not changed to Christie Anna.

So you ask, why isn’t the cast of characters in the published copy? Most novels I read, don’t have a cast of characters. It is not a big deal to include one with the names and a sentence on who they are as a reminder to the reader. So, maybe I should think about including on in my next book.

Marc Liebman

June 2017

Concussed

Concussions happen to other people. Not me! We read about professional athletes who have them and the ugly long-term effects if one has several of them, particularly in a short period of time. It is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy a.k.a. CTE. It comes from repetitive brain trauma, i.e. hitting your head or being hit on the head with something hard.

Back in the old days when I was a ski racer, we didn’t wear helmets except in the downhill. In other races, if you fell and banged your head on the snow that was often the consistency of granite, it was part of the game. We were much more worried about breaking a leg because that would take us out of racing for six weeks or more!

If your head smacked the frozen granular surface in a fall and you saw stars, we all laughed about getting your “bell rung.” You took two aspirin and wrote off the headache as what it was. Honestly, I have no idea how many times this happened to me other than it was more than once, sometimes several times in a season. Recent research suggests CTE shows up about 10 – 15 years after the last event and I’m well past that window.

Fast forward to last week. We – two of my grandchildren and I – were stopped, waiting for the light to change when a car hit us from behind. I remember hearing a screech and looked into the rear view mirror just in time to see a silver blur slam into the right rear corner of my Honda Pilot. My head bounced off the headrest. The policewoman estimated that the other driver was going around 30 miles an hour when she hit us.

We got out and I checked on my two grandkids. One, like me was a bit dizzy, remembered seeing stars. After a few minutes, the dizziness went away but I felt out of sorts, nauseous and had a headache. After our car was towed away, we went to an ER and the doctor confirmed that two of the three of us had mild concussions.

On discharge, we were given a sheet that listed post concussion symptoms. I glanced at it and brought it home figuring that later in the day, I’d feel fine. Au contraire, mon ami!

For the rest of Friday, the headache persisted. When I got up Saturday morning, it was still there. I started to take one of our dogs out for a walk, got about a hundred feet from the house and everything in my body said stop! So I went back to the house. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I just didn’t feel right all day Saturday. Nausea came and went several times during the day. I tried doing some editing and had difficulty concentrating. In fact, this blog being typed around 0800 on Sunday, roughly 45 hours after the accident is one of the first things I’ve tried writing other than short responses to couple of emails.

So, as I type this, concussions do happen and they’re serious s – – t. What scares me is their cumulative effect over a lifetime. We know so much about concussions now than we did back in the sixties. And, while this last one was mild and I haven’t had one in a long time, is this one a trigger to something worse? Hence, my thoughts about CTE. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I have to wait for the symptoms to subside which may take another day or two so if they don’t, it means a trip to a neurologist.

Marc Liebman

June 2017

Manuscript Resurrection Part II

Last month I wrote Manuscript Resurrection and it was about the next book I am working on called Moscow Airlift. In the earlier blog, I thought I was going to send it off to a publisher by the end of May with well-founded hope that it would be accepted and published sometime around the end of this year or early next.

When I finished the latest read through, something bugged me about the manuscript. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was not, and the word that comes to mind is “comfortable” with the manuscript. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was really bothering me. While there were parts of it that I thought were really, really good, there were others that needed a lot of work.

But that wasn’t the problem. It was something else, but what? I couldn’t figure it out…

So, I started again. Then one afternoon while I was struggling, it hit me why…. So, let me give you an analogy. Early in my flying career, I was having trouble with approaches. On one really bad one, I kept making correction after correction and each one made the approach worse. The instructor took control because he correctly sensed this was a wonderful opportunity for what I call a “coaching moment.”

He waved off the landing and he gave me control when we were climbing back to pattern altitude. Then he said, “Don’t be afraid to wave off an approach you can’t salvage.” He called it “pushing a bad position.”

So I’m waving off sending Moscow Airlift to a publisher. It is not ready.

What’s needed to fix it? Short answer is I’m not sure but I think it is at least two things. One is a plot thread that isn’t working. Yes, it provides a pretext for part of the plot, but I keep asking myself is it really needed. Or, is just a few passages that I like and am reluctant to cut?

The second is that this is a book based on a failed attempt at writing a novel back before the turn of the century. I liked some elements of the plot, but not others. The question running through the back of my mind is why didn’t I start over. Maybe I should have? Am I pushing a bad position?

At the moment, I don’t know but instinct tells me it is. The more I try to fix it, the worse it gets. So, its time to reassess and take a fresh look at Moscow Airlift. Stay tuned.

Marc Liebman

June 2017

Thoughts on Memorial Day 2017

Yesterday, I didn’t post this blog because, well, it wasn’t written and I wanted to post it on Memorial Day… I want to take a moment and share my thoughts about an important American holiday. It ranks with July 4th as one of the two most important U.S. holidays.

The tradition of remembering members of the U.S. Armed Forces who died while serving began way back in the 1860s during and in the aftermath of the bloodiest war in American history. More Americans died during the Civil War than ALL the other wars our country’s history combined. That includes World Wars I and II!

On the other hand, Veterans’ Day is celebrated to recognize all those who served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Officially, the last Monday in May was deemed Memorial Day in 1966 by President Johnson that made Memorial Day May 31st. In 1968, in the Congress passed the Uniform Holiday Act making Memorial Day the last Monday in May.

Memorial Day is not a day off from work or school to run out to the mall to take advantage of special sales. Nor is it what some call the first day of summer travel period. Those who deem it so, do a dis-service to all those who died in the service of our country. Instead, it is a day to remember those who died serving this wonderful country and whose sacrifices ensure that we enjoy our freedoms so we can go to car dealer or mall to go shopping.

There’s not a day or week that I don’t think about the generations of Americans who served their country, willing to risk life and limb for the freedom and way of life of the United States, take a moment to think about them and thank them.

‘Nuff said.

Marc Liebman

May 2017

Resurrection of a Manuscript

By definition, resurrection means coming back from the dead. The word is appropriate is because this is exactly what happened to my first attempt at writing a novel, a book with the working title of Moscow Airlift.

Tom Clancy’s first three books – The Hunt for the Red October, Red Storm Rising, and Patriot Games – were already on my bookshelf and I thought that I could write something that good! So, I started pecking away.

It didn’t take long to figure out that I didn’t have a clue. Over the next few months and years, I kept at it, determined to finish the manuscript. A lot of things got in the way – raising kids, Desert Storm and Shield, working – got in the way. It took almost three years to finish the first draft and I put my heart and soul into the story line.

Back in those days, word processing software was, if not its infancy, certainly not what it is today. At the time, I preferred a long forgotten package called Samna. Along with Word Perfect, and WordStar, they are part of the dustbin of software history. Parts of Moscow Airlift were written in all three and getting them into one version of Microsoft Word was, back in those days, a challenge. But, I digress.

Even then, I knew there were a lot of things wrong with the book, e.g. it was way, way too long at almost 280,000 words and the plot was overly complex. Nonetheless, I tried to “sell” it to agents and a couple of publishers. One looked at the manuscript and said, you’ve got the format right but it needs a lot of work!

He was right. Life interfered and I put it on the electronic shelf where it stayed until about 2012. Several agents and publishers via either their query guidelines or in e-mail exchanges wanted to know whether Big Mother 40 was part of a series or a one-trick pony. I was arrogant (dumb?) enough to say yes and added Moscow Airlift to the list of titles along with short blurbs about the plots. None of which existed outside the recesses of my mind.

Now, five books into the Josh Haman series and it was time to look at Moscow Airlift again. I hadn’t looked at the manuscript in years. Looking at the dates on the files, the last time I did anything was 2013 when I reworked the 1999 version and got it down to about 155,000 words.

Fast forward to 2017 and I needed a book to follow Inner Look. It was either Moscow Airlift or The Kurile Wedge Incident. Originally, I thought The Kurile Wedge Incident would be next. However, after a pass at it, I decided to swap the two and make Moscow Airlift book six.

Yesterday, I literally finished the last edit before it goes to a publisher. Is it perfect? No. Is it a lot better than either the 1999 or 2013 versions? Absolutely. Is it a great story? Only you, as a reader can tell.

Right now, it is only partially resurrected. If and when it comes out, it will be fully resurrected in that it rose from the world of dead manuscripts.

Marc Liebman

May 2017

 

BISAC Codes… Huh? Whazzat?

When my first book came out, I had no idea what a BISAC code was. Nor did I know when the second one was published or the third. The way I found out was that when I was developing the marketing plan for number four – Forgotten, the publisher asked me to identify/segment the market by BISAC code.

Rather than act totally dumb and stupid, I said sure, not having a clue what a BISAC code is. So, you ask, what is a BISAC code? The acronym stands for Book Industry Standards and Communications and were created by the Book Industry Study Group made up of hundreds of companies in the publishing biz. The concept behind codes was to create a standardized way to electronically identify and transfer information whether it was electronic (for a Kindle, iBook, etc.) or physical, i.e. a printed book. Think of it as a new version of the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalogue that some of us remember.

Each BISAC code has nine digits and represents up to a four level tree. FIC for Fiction is the first level and the six digits break it down into the additional levels separated by the forward slashes. For example, the codes for Forgotten are:

FIC 000000 = General Fiction

FIC 002000 = General Fiction/Action and Adventure

FIC 005040 = General Fiction/Erotica/Lesbian (because there are several relatively graphic love scenes)

FIC 006000 = General Fiction/Thrillers/Espionage

FIC 030120 = General Fiction/Thrillers/Historical

FIC 031050 = General Fiction/Thrillers/Military

FIC 320000 = General Fiction/War and Military

Why are the codes important? One, it is one way that agents and publishers define or segregate the market. And two, it helps in the electronic world to be able to gather data that someone or some company puts in a database and is paid to analyze generate all sorts of reports.

How does it affect me as an author? First, the publisher assigns the BISAC codes, the author doesn’t. Second, if one decides to apply for an award, most of the ones to which I submitted either requested the code or used the same categories. And, third, I’ve talked to several companies that supposedly help promote your book and one of the first things they ask are what are the BISAC codes for the book.

So, if you are every asked, you now know BISAC codes are. For those of us in the publishing industry, they’re important. For the rest of you, at least now you know this bit of trivia!

Marc Liebman

May 2017