Year 5 of an Indie Author: Week 9

Welcome to Leap Day. It's an extra day for the year, and an extra day to prepare before the new month starts tomorrow.

I might have mentioned this before, but as consequential New Year's Resolutions can be, New Month Resolutions can also be helpful. I tend not to think of them as resolutions. Instead, the starts of new months are opportunities to begin a new project or, in my case, re-start a stalled book.

The Benefits of a Fallow Period 

I started the novel as part of NaNoWriMo and I made excellent progress. But I hit a snag in December and stopped writing. I didn't think much of it. December is a time for Christmas movies and books and TV specials and music. Besides, I told myself, I'd just pick up the tale on New Year's Day.

Didn't happen.

Again, I shrugged. I had just stared a new-to-me book--Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz--and I decided to read more than write. I'd get back to my own book soon enough.

That didn't happen either.

Then, I started to wonder why I didn't jump back on the book. I started to edge towards chastising myself for not writing. I stopped short. There was a reason I wasn't writing, and I decided to ride that wave.

When February started, I thought I'd get back to the book. Didn't. I kept reading, moving on to The Nowhere Man, the second Orphan X novel, and added the first few issues of the famous comic book series MASTER OF KUNG FU. I enjoyed reading and, frankly, enjoyed not writing.

But as late February took hold, I began to feel that pull. It felt good. To get myself back on track, I re-read my manuscript, and two things happened.

One, I read the story and enjoyed it. I saw the better writing, could see my progress as a writer from where I was five years ago. I actually smiled at more than one part.

The second thing was I saw what got me off track. I read and edited as I went. I made an outline on paper, keeping notes of things to fix. By the time I got to where I stopped, I knew exactly what I needed to do to course correct this book.

And I can't wait until tomorrow when I jump back on the book and move forward.

Clive Cussler

This week, the world lost a great writer.

I came to Clive Cussler late and via his Isaac Bell series. I knew about Dirk Pitt and his adventure series, but only read a book or two. Maybe only one. I think I've read one or two of the other series as well.

Isaac Bell, on the other hand, well, I'm literally listening to the latest book, Titanic Secret, when I learned of Cussler's passing. I love the Bell series and the historical settings.

I'm not the only one who loved Cussler's books. Millions of readers have loved the adventures Cussler pens. This week, as word of his passing spread over the internet, I enjoyed reading what Cussler meant to these readers. What really made me smile was reading how Cussler was the author lots of dads read.

As a writer, however, I grew to appreciate and study how Cussler structured his books. I listened to almost all of them--narrated by the excellent Scott Brick--but I would constantly take notes. I would realize how excited or tense I was during certain passages and then go back and study those passages to figure out why.

For me, reading a Cussler book was not only an adventure, it was an education.

Rest in peace, Mr. Cussler, and thanks for all the stories.

The Gray Ghost by Clive Cussler and Robin Burcell

Clive Cussler is one of those authors I admire. He cut his teeth on his Dirk Pitt novels before expanding his universe to include the NUMA series (Kurt Austin) and Oregon Files (Juan Cabrillo). These three series have numerous crossovers (if my paltry reading of the entire run is any indication). But it’s his Isaac Bell series, set in the early days of the 20th Century, that I really enjoy. The fourth series is the Fargo adventures, featuring Sam and Remi Fargo. They’re a charming pair of millionaires (thanks to Sam’s invention) and they travel the world, searching for treasure and doing good. I had only read one novel of theirs to date (THE TOMBS) but the latest novel, THE GRAY GHOST, features not only them, but Isaac Bell.

How, might you ask, can a story set in the present also include Bell? Well, it’s a very clever conceit. In 2018, someone steals the Gray Ghost, a Rolls-Royce car from 1906. In the course of the story, Sam and Remi get involved in the search for the priceless car. You see, there has always been a legend that treasure exists in the car, but no one has found it for over a century. As soon as the Fargos get involved, they have bad guys trying to stop them, even while they try to help the actual present-day owners locate the vehicle.

Where Isaac Bell comes in is through a journal. Back in 1906, Bell helped an ancestor of the present owner thwart another attempt to steal the Gray Ghost. That ancestor kept a journal of the exploits, but that volume of the journal is missing in the present day. Stolen. Cussler and co-author Robin Burcell keep the action going not only with the Fargo adventures but the Bell investigation as well, interspersing passages of the journal with the current action.

As with all Cussler novels, I listened to the brilliant Scott Brick narrate the story. It was interesting to hear slight variations between how Cussler and Burcell treat Bell versus Cussler and Justin Scott, the team who writes the Bell novels. Brick brings so much to his narration that it enlivens the story above the mere prose.

If I have one criticism of this series, it’s in the back-and-forth dialogue of the two main characters. Often times, you don’t get the spark of passion between husband and wife. I’m not calling for a bunch of intimate scenes, and I’m completely fine with them walking to a hotel room with the knowledge of what they’re about to do, but I would like to see a little more fire to their relationship. In one of the dire moments in this book, I got the sense of it, but I’d like to see if when they’re not fighting for their lives. It’s a little thing, but noticeable.

For a good summer beach read, THE GRAY GHOST is a humdinger, and it’s propelled me to my next Fargo adventure, THE MAYAN SECRETS.

Book Review: The Emperor's Revenge by Clive Cussler

Sometimes it pays to read to the last sentence.

Clive Cussler has the type of literary output I aim to mimic. It started with the Dirk Pitt adventures and, over the years, Cussler has expanded his series to include the Oregon Files, the NUMA files, the Fargo Adventures and the Isaac Bell series. The first four all take place in contemporary times. The Isaac Bell series, my true introduction to Cussler’s works, is by far my favorite mainly because it is set in the early 20th Century.

Now comes THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE, the latest in the Oregon Files series. It’s the 11th book in the series, but my first. This series focuses on Juan Cabrillo, the captain of a fancy ship, the Oregon. On the outside, this ship looks like a hunk of junk, a trawler that wouldn’t normally catch the eye of any bad guy. Underneath, the Oregon is the top-of-the-line military ship equipped with all the latest technology and weapons. Cabrillo commands a group of folks who work as a team called the Corporation, a secret sub-group of the CIA.

I would have eventually gotten around to the Oregon Files series, but what jumpstarted my interest was reading my first NUMA book, THE PHARAOH’S CURSE earlier this spring. In that book, those main characters—Kurt Austin and company—got into a gunfight. In the middle of all that, Juan Cabrillo and one of his men show up. Each team tells the other team the Thing each need to know and then they went on their way. How cool is that! It was basically a little marketing ploy to get interested readers to buy THE EMPEROR’S REVENGE, which was publish three months after PHARAOH’S SECRET. It worked for me.

So what is EMPEROR’S REVENGE about? As in most of Cussler’s modern-day thrillers, the story opens in the past, namely 1821 and Napoleon Bonaparte. That’ll clue you in on whom the “emperor” is. Turns out, Napoleon escaped his exile at St. Helena taking with him secret messages from handwritten notes. Cut to the present day and Juan Cabillo and his team are on a mission. At the conclusion of the mission, he receives word of the events at the Monaco Grand Prix. It seems there was a huge accident that was used to cover-up something worse: a bank heist. Not something that might land on the Corporation’s radar until the truth is revealed: all the Corporation’s money was among the cash looted from the bank.

Now the story is personal.

What follows is Juan’s investigation into the bank heist. He and his team are assisted by Gretchen, a former partner of Juan’s and his “wife” on a previous mission. Needless to say, sparks fly, and not just from the bullets ricocheting off everything during gun fights.

To say that EMPEROR’S REVENGE follows standard thriller pacing sounds like a bad thing, but it isn’t. The pacing is nice and steady. The revelation of the bad guy, who makes up his team, and what he’s after is delivered piecemeal and in nice chunks. I enjoyed the story, the build-up, and the character moments. I suspect readers who have read the ten previous books will get more inside jokes, but as a newbie to this series, this book was just fine.

Long ago, if there was a new book (like EMPEROR’S REVENGE) that caught my eye and I learned it was a series, I’d always go back to book one and plow through the series. But I’d often get burned out and actually never get to the book with the cool cover that got my attention. I’ve chunked that reading style. Now, I read the current book. If I like it, I’ll go back. It seems that there’s a new Oregon File book every year so I have a decade’s worth of material to read.

I listened to the book by the brilliant narrator Scott Brick. He reads almost every series by Cussler, especially the Isaac Bell ones. Brick has a touch of whimsy to his voice and cadence that propels the stories, like EMPEROR’S REVENGE, along in a special way. Seriously, Brick could read the LA phonebook and I’d pay to listen. He’s that good.

Oh, and read until the last sentence…

What I Learned as a Reader:

Back in my original blog, I’d always end reviews with this and I thought I’d apply it here.

In Chapter 1, all the characters are introduced. For longtime readers, this is old hat. For newbies like me, it’s perfect. Each character gets a sentence or two of backstory and a trait. The prose makes each person on the team easily identifiable. From then on, through the rest of the book, I know what these characters look like and act like. I try to do that in my own writing, but it’s great to see how longtime professional like Cussler and Boyd Morrison do it.