R.J. Minnick's Blog, page 11

Never promise what you can’t deliver…

… a brief monologue on the ways that can backfire on you

 

Besides being a means of offering my excuses for missing deadline once again, this short list enumerates various ways promising something can get you into trouble.

 Most obvious and pertinent: Never put in writing the date your book will be available unless it is on its way to the printer. And not even then. Those of you who are alert will  note the ‘update’ of launch info for FLYING PURPLE  PEOPLE SEATER. I won’t bother you with exc...

One more quick note…

Alas, as you will see from my new message on the sidebar  — launch date has been pushed slightly back AGAIN. My wonderful alert editor found an absolute morass of confusion in my current revision of FLYING PURPLE PEOPLE SEATER. I’m in hot pursuit of the problem, but it will take longer than a mere 5 days to fix completely. After all, it has to be done right, right?

 

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So, a new launch date of the 29th of April, and soon you can see what happens in the Flying Purple People Seater.

Oh! and for...

Day at the Write-in….

Spent about six hours of Saturday at our group’s write-in. We had use of an event room with its adjoining kitchen at our library. Some pot luck, a little set-up, and we had ourselves a friendly quiet location dedicated to fostering an atmosphere conducive to writing.

We had people working on designing covers for their self-published books. It’s a two-edged sword when you publish yourself. You’re in charge of everything, but that means you’re responsible for everything.

Someone was outlining a...

Be careful what you ask for…

So, yesterday I posted a little blurb I wrote for Remainder. In full flush of having posted it, I read it last night for my writing group. And, so, the pluses/minuses of being part of a writers group, and hence today’s title, be careful what you ask for.

Because I got the full brunt of their critique. To get right down to it, after setting ego aside, I saw the value of their criticisms. Here, after a bit more work and input from my closest critics, is the revised blurb.

If Wilson Parker bette...

A small blurb…

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Set in Middle Tennessee a year after 9/11, REMAINDER is about a small community dealing with a potential land buyout by a developer out of Nashville. Amid the early tensions of war and the threat of an end to their way of life, residents nevertheless must face personal drama as well. For salesman Wilson Parker and 13-year-old Ty Cummins, in particular, this year will change their lives.

 

 

*Note

I posted this not only to give more information about my book, but as an example of a small blur...

And it’s on to the next thing

Hard on the heels of launching REMAINDER and filing taxes and the Easter holiday, I am scrambling to publish the third book in my Mackenzie Wilder/Classic Boat romantic mysteries, FLYING PURPLE PEOPLE SEATER. Working now on final revisions, cover, and formatting as I wonder if going in the direction I did was really a good idea. Ever have those moments?  The ones where you wonder if you just killed your own darling by being daring?

On the other hand, I can honestly say I like what I did with...

Tip

In ‘A Return to Show, Don’t Tell‘ I shared information about a useful tool called the Emotion Thesaurus.

There is a now a coterie of such thesauri, practically establishing its own genre. If writing is what you do, you might want to check these out.

 

 

Thoughts….

REMAINDER (my newly-published novel) has as its background the firs[image error]t year of war following the events of 9/11. It was the year when we tried to assimilate the shock, realized we were in a whole new world, and attempted to pull  together to cope, even as emotions tore at the fringes to rend us apart. It is one of the reasons, I think, that agents and publishers didn’t quite know what to do with it and so rejected it.

But I was intrigued by what we were going through, even as we went through it...

LAUNCH DAY!

REMAINDER is now available at Amazon.com, and will soon be available through other channels, such as barnesandnoble.com’

 

WHOOPEE!

 

I  have loved writing this book, but I am so glad it is finished. I hope you buy it, but what I really hope is that whether you buy it or borrow it, you read it and enjoy it. If you do, please share it with others. Because that’s what books are all about, sharing thoughts, feelings, and ideas. I love to tell stories, but mostly I love to know that people enjoy...

Tip

Having just completed a triple review of my REMAINDER manuscript, I wanted to share a tip with you all.

When you can’t think of anything else to check your book for in terms of grammar, punctuation, word choice, structure, etc, do one thing more.

Read with an ear toward flow. Anything that interrupts the flow of your reading or pulls you out of the story whether by distracting you with a fancy word or ruining your suspended disbelief, must go.

It can be deleted, it can be replaced, it can si...