Jackson Coppley's Blog, page 13

Leaving Lisa - Free for Valentines Day

For Valentines Day, I have a special Kindle book giveaway for you. On Feb 12, 13, 14 Leaving Lisa, an AI Love Story will be a Kindle Bargain. It is free on each of those days. 

My gift to lovers everywhere.

Go to: http://www.jacksoncoppley.com/home for information on the novel and a link to get it for free.

How They Won

I’ve been chided by an editor for using ‘they’ to refer to an individual. We all do it in conversation all the time. Example: “If any one of you have an issue with what I said, they need to see me.” Of course, the sentence should be “If any one of you have an issue with what I said, he or she needs to see me.”

Thing are changing. If anyone has an issue with the correct using, I ask they take a look at the article on How ‘They’ Won (https://time.com/5763175/they-as-singular-pronoun/) by Katy Steinmetz and published in Time Magazine.

One of the beauties of using they as a singular pronoun is it being gender neutral. I’m writing a mystery and I don’t want you to know the gender of a bad guy. I have to perform literary gymnastics to work around the issue. Now, they can be either. Long live They.

Jack Reacher & Lee Child

 

James Dover Grant is best know by his pen name, Lee Child. When Grant set out to write detective mysteries, he was clever about the marketing. He chose the pen name Lee Child, not only because it was simple, but Child would appear on bookstore shelves next to Chandler (as in Raymond Chandler) a fellow Brit to whose readers he hoped to appeal. The name Reacher came from Child's sister who would call upon her taller sibling to reach things on high shelves. He was her reacher.

Lee Child's advice to writers is "write the fast things slow and the slow things fast." That's why, when Jack Reacher believes a bad guy is around the corner, you will read a page of how Reacher contemplates his maneuvers before he executes them. Stretch out the action. 

Now, after twenty-four Jack Reacher novels, Child is turning over the series to his brother. Let's see how the loyal fans (and there are many) react.

Read more about it here.

Bond, James Bond

A few notes about 007:

I've written about James Bond and the influence he had on Nicholas Foxe. See my post on James Bond here.

I have a new character in the works who is more like Bond, much to his chagrin. Be sure to subscribe to this web site to be the first to know all about him.

Recently I came across an interesting article on the family who has been the keepers of the Bond legacy. Read it here.

Book Review: Virgil Wander

Once in a while, a book comes along with odd characters you love. Virgil Wander is that book for me. The book opens with a car crash. Virgil survives the crash but suffers head trauma. He has a loss of words, particularly adjectives. Author Enger is masterful in describing the way in which these words return.

Virgil operates a derelict movie theatre in a derelict small town. The theatre offers a center point for several stories involving it.

The story progresses at its own casual pace, almost melodic. A gentle read.

 

Heroes and The Nicholas Foxe Team

When The Code Hunters - A Nicholas Foxe Adventure was launched late in April, I didn't know what to expect next. I'm delighted to report that it has been a hit. Readers report in their reviews how much they like the characters. When I created The Code Hunters,  I gave birth to a group of new friends. The inspiration came from other hero stories, particularly Mission: Impossible. Take a few minutes to peruse this blog for my entry on Mission: Impossible, Indiana Jones and other heroes. They all shaped The Code Hunters.

Hmong People in Vietnam

Eight years ago, I visited the Hmong people in Vietnam. What I learned about them inspired part of my Novel Leaving Lisa

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Better than Dan Brown?

The Code Hunters - A Nicholas Foxe Adventure5.0 out of 5 starsSuperb adventure tale seeking the origin of modern humansApril 28, 2019A team of expert cavers exploring a challenging cave in New Mexico in search of a possible connection to Carlsbad Caverns tumble into a chamber deep underground containing something which just shouldn't be there: a huge slab of metal, like titanium, twenty-four feet square and eight inches thick, set into the rock of the cave, bearing markings which resemble the pits and lands on an optical storage disc. No evidence for human presence in the cave prior to the discoverers is found, and dating confirms that the slab is at least ten thousand years old. There is no way an object that large could be brought through the cramped and twisting passages of the cave to the chamber where it was found. Wealthy adventurer Nicholas Foxe, with degrees in archaeology and cryptography, gets wind of the discovery and pulls strings to get access to the cave, putting together a research program to try to understand the origin of the slab and decode its enigmatic inscription. But as news of the discovery reaches others, they begin to pursue their own priorities. A New Mexico senator sends his on-the-make assistant to find out what is going on and see how it might be exploited to his advantage. An ex-Army special forces operator makes stealthy plans. An MIT string theorist with a wide range of interests begins exploring unorthodox ideas about how the inscriptions might be encoded. A televangelist facing hard times sees the Tablet as the way back to the top of the heap. A wealthy Texan sees the potential in the slab for wealth beyond his abundant dreams of avarice. As the adventure unfolds, we encounter a panoply of fascinating characters: a World Health Organization scientist, an Italian violin maker with an eccentric theory of language and his autistic daughter, and a “just the facts” police inspector. As clues are teased from the enigma, we visit exotic locations and experience harrowing adventure, finally grasping the significance of a discovery that bears on the very origin of modern humans. About now, you might be thinking “This sounds like a Dan Brown novel”, and in a sense you'd be right. But this is the kind of story Dan Brown would craft if he were a lot better author than he is: whereas Dan Brown books have become stereotypes of cardboard characters and fill-in-the-blanks plots with pseudo-scientific bafflegab stirred into the mix, this is a gripping tale filled with complex, quirky characters, unexpected plot twists, beautifully sketched locales, and a growing sense of wonder as the significance of the discovery is grasped. If anybody in Hollywood had any sense (yes, I know…) they would make this into a movie instead of doing another tedious Dan Brown sequel. This is subtitled “A Nicholas Foxe Adventure”: I sincerely hope there will be more to come.John Walker is a founder of Autodesk and current lives in Switzerland where he reviews books that challenge our thinking. His web site is at https://www.fourmilab.ch

Heroes - Robert Langdon

Robert Langdon is not as well-known as James Bond or Indiana Jones, at least not by name. However, mention The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, or Origin, and you might say, “Oh yeah. That guy.” Langdon is a creation of Dan Brown and plays the hero in each of his novels since Angels and Demons.According to Dan Brown, Robert Langdon is “the man he wishes he could be.” Langdon mirrors Brown as close as possible. They share the same birthday. Both attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He’s all about symbols and puzzles. But Brown pays tribute to another person by sharing the last name with John Langdon, a man known for his ambigrams, words or designs that appear the same way when viewed from different directions.Last of all Brown added one of my heroes to the character of Robert Langdon. That person is Joseph Campbell. Campbell’s writing on religion and mythology is contained in The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The Code Hunters relies on myth and its power to entertain and inspire.Brown wrote that he “remembered admiring Campbell’s matter-of-fact responses and wanting my own character Langdon to project that same respectful understanding when faced with complex spiritual issues.”To me, Robert Langdon is everyman. He’s not a Bond playboy, or an Indiana Jones explorer. He’s just a college professor that gets pulled into adventures. In the movie, he’s played by Tom Hanks, an actor who’s made a career on playing average people who are made heroes by no choice of their own. Think Saving Private Ryan or Sully.I added dashes of Bond and Indiana Jones to the character of Nicholas Foxe, but also made him an unlikely hero like Robert Langdon.

Mission: Impossible

The Impossible Mission Force, IMF, represents a modern concept. Each member has a special talent led by a man with no discernible talent of his own. This is the concept of the TV series Mission: Impossible. The movie series turns the concept on its head by killing off the TV series leader, Jim Phelps, and making a team member, played by Tom Cruise, the hero of the first and subsequent movies in the series. I’m focusing here on the original TV program. I never missed an episode growing up.Mission: Impossible débuted on CBS in 1966 (when Tom Cruise was only four-years-old). The original leader with no special talent was Dan Briggs, played by Steven Hill, but that actor was replaced after the first season (long story). Peter Graves took over starting the second season and Jim Phelps was born.It seems that Mr. Phelps’ limited talent included handling the self-destructing taped message outlining the mission for that episode. Who was the Secretary who would deny any knowledge if they were killed or captured? No one ever knew. Phelps would then go to his apartment to choose the members of the team from a group of photos. No suspense here. They were always the same people.The team members had the talent.A mechanical and electronics genius A world record-holding weight lifterA noted actor, makeup artist, escape artist, magician and "man of a million faces."A top fashion model and actressGreg Morris played the electronic genius and Peter Lupus, the weight lifter for all seven seasons of the show. The remaining roles were filled by rotating actors including Leonard Nimoy and Sam Elliott.Mission: Impossible influenced my approach in The Code Hunters. An unlikely group of people come together, each with special talents. Some readers see Nicholas Foxe more like Jim Phelps, the guy who facilitates things, but not the lone wolves types like James Bond or Indiana Jones.Having a team enriches the novel. Each person has their own story to tell. Each person brings conflict and tension with the others team members.So, thank you Mission: Impossible for influencing my own IMF team.