Update: We're Back!

Sometimes, after some thought, you made a different decision.

Back in March, I launched my official author website (scottdennisparker.com) and publishing house (quadrantfictionstudio.com). My intention was to leave this blogspot account and transfer all future posts to the author account.

Then I thought “Why?” Why not post to both places? It’s no big deal. And longtime readers probably have the blogspot address bookmarked and may have been missing posts. If other readers are like me, I tend to lock in a URL and then forget about it.

So, I’m back here. I’ll be cross-posting to both sites.

The reason: the next post...

Brad Meltzer is My New Favorite Author Interviewee!

The best thing I heard this week were two interviews Brad Meltzer gave via podcasts. The first was the latest installment of Kevin Smith’s Fat Man on Batman. I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: when Smith interviews a creator and deep dives into what makes that creator tick, it is some of the most inspirational things I’ve ever listened to. I had already gone back and re-listened to the Mark Hamill episodes before the Meltzer episode dropped. What’s great about Smith and Meltzer talking is that they’re me. They are about a year or two younger than I am so they lived the geek life I lived. But the material, the life experiences they discuss are wonderfully profound. Just listen to Meltzer’s comment about a ‘parent’s love in bottled form.’ I'm not ashamed to say that some of the discussion moved me, even sitting at my desk at the day job. Brilliant.

Throughout the podcast, Smith kept referencing “Hardwick” and needing to get Meltzer out in under an hour. It turns out that Meltzer was going on The Nerdist podcast with Chris Hardwick. Never heard of it but, in the high I felt right after the Fat Man episode, I immediately downloaded the Meltzer interview at the Nerdist. Holy moley! Even more Meltzer goodness. There was only about 5-10% of common material between the two episodes. What comes across is that Meltzer is a genuinely nice guy, the kind of person who’d invite you to sit down and talk with him even if he didn’t know you. I was eagerly awaiting the release of The President’s Shadow, his third Beecher White novel, and I snatched up the audiobook on release day (narrated by audio superstar Scott Brick). After hearing both of these episodes, I went home, pulled my copy of Identity Crisis from my bookshelf for a re-read (it’s been seven or eight years). I got the issue numbers he wrote for Green Arrow and Justice League and plan on getting those trade paperbacks soon.  I even checked my local listings on when Meltzer’s TV shows come on. 

Houston wasn’t on Meltzer’s tour schedule this year. That’s a shame, but these two podcasts make up for not seeing him in person. In a way, however, these two podcasts actually let you get to know the man more than a book event. That won’t stop me from hoping that his next project brings him to Houston. I want tell him thanks for being my inspiration this week.

BTW, The Nerdist podcast is awesome! I’ve already and listened to episodes featuring Tom Bergeron, William Shatner, Grant Morrison, and Mark Hamill. And there are something like 600 episodes. It's like Christmas...in July!


I'm a history major so I wouldn't be myself if I didn't acknowledge that today is Independence Day in the United States. Here is how John Adams predicted the great day (in his mind, 2 July) would be celebrated:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

I think he pretty much nailed it.

Book Review Club: CANARY by Duane Swierczynski

(This is the April 2015 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the complete list, click the icon at the bottom of this essay.)

With a bright yellow cover with a title like that, I wasn't sure what to make of the book CANARY by Duane Swierczynski. Before I read this book, the word conjured exactly two things in my head: a bird in a cage and the bird in a mineshaft. I had no idea what the word meant in the crime fiction context. Now I do, and I really like it.

Canary in crime fiction is a confidential informant. I guess because they sing like a bird to the law and spill all the dirt on the bad guys. The book CANARY focuses on a young college student, Sarie Holland. She attends school in Philadelphia--Swierczynski’s town--and, as the book opens, she’s nursing a beer at a party the night before she has to pick up her Dad at the airport. The mom’s dead and Sarie and her little brother live at home. It’s the night before Thanksgiving and she and her pals are studying for exams...at a party. Right. There’s a cute guy Sarie calls D. and she kinda likes him so she’s pretty surprised when he asks her if she could give him a life to a friend’s house. D. doesn’t drive and, after checking her watch and doing the mental math, Sarie agrees. At the destination, D. tells her to park in the special spot his friend has reserved.

No big deal, right? Wrong. Narcotics cop Ben Wildey is there, staking out the house of a mid-level dealer in the area--the very same house D. just entered. Unbeknownst to Sarie, Wildey’s spotted her and busts her. All he wants is D’s name. He is the one wearing the red pants, after all, you know, “your boyfriend.” Sarie doesn’t cave so Wildey has little choice but to bust her. Faced with the crisis that could ruin her life, Sarie opens Door #2: she decides/is forced to become a confidential informant. A canary.

Now, in the hands of some writers, this story starts to become a sermon on the dangers of drugs, the evils it can do, how the justice system is all out of whack. Well, rest assured, this is not that kind of book. With Swierczynski as the wheelman (wink wink), you are in for one heck of a good ride.

You see, Sarie takes her role as a canary pretty seriously. In fact, she’s convinced that as soon as she gives Wildey a name, he’ll be off her back for good. Being the good college student, she does research and starts to learn about the criminal world. And then she starts to deliver information to Wildey who just happens to be angling for a huge score back at the station. So is his captain. Then words gets around the criminal ranks that there’s a new snitch, and, well, drug dealers don’t like snitches.

The book is written in an interesting fashion. When it’s Sarie, Swierczynski writes in first person. Anyone else is in third person. This has the great advantage of literally getting inside Sarie’s head, the head of straight-arrow, middle-class college girl, as she learns and acts on what she learns. I listened to the book and Sarie’s narration was handled very well by Casey Holloway. She gives Sarie snark, fear, anger, determination, and humor all in the voice. George Bryant handles everything else and his nuances among the different characters, good guys as well as bad, are wonderful. On the page, Sarie’s words are in a different font so it’s a nice visual cue to let the reader know the a change in point of view is taking place.

I didn’t expect many of the twists and turns CANARY took but I enjoyed them all. There was a moment of coincidence that gave me a slight pause, but, by then, I was so into the book, I didn’t care. And then there’s the ending. Completely satisfying.

I’ve read many of Swierczynski’s books and enjoyed them all. I can, with good confidence, recommend CANARY, preferably the audio. It’s fantastic.

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@Barrie Summy

We're Moving!

It's been a slow process, but as of today, 4 March 2015, I will be posting all blog posts over at my author website, www.scottdennisparker.com. I am keeping the blogspot area open as an archive of all the writing I did for the past number of years.

If you have an RSS feed, feel free to update it.

Thank you for reading here and I hope you continue to read and enjoy the things I write in the years to come.

Now Available: Wading Into War

It is with great excitement that I can announce the official publication of WADING INTO WAR, the first Benjamin Wade novella and my first published book.

Houston, 1940

Benjamin Wade is a laid back private investigator whose jobs are so mundane that he doesn't even carry a gun. He thought his latest job was going to be easy.

He thought wrong.

Hired by beguiling Lillian Saxton to find a missing reporter with knowledge of her brother’s whereabouts in war-torn Europe, Wade follows a lead and knocks on a door. He gets two answers: bullets and a corpse.

Now Wade must unravel the truth about the reporter’s death, Lillian’s brother, and the whereabouts of a cache of documents that reveal a shocking story from Nazi-controlled Europe and an even more sinister secret here at home.

The book is available in electronic format from Amazon, Kobo, and Nook. iBooks will debut shortly as well as Overdrive.

For those of y'all who might want a paperback, that's in process and will be along soon.

As a bonus, the ebook includes the first chapter of the next book I'll be publishing later this spring as well as a little enticement. There will also be some bonus material in the monthly newsletter. You can find the link along the menu.

Come back to this blog in the coming weeks for what I'm calling "DVD Extras," or some behind-the-scenes peeks at how this book came about and previews of upcoming titles.

I hope you enjoy WADING INTO WAR. I enjoyed writing it and now, like a grown child, it is time for the book to see the world.

Adjusting One’s Expectations

First off: have you read Alex’s post from Thursday? You should. My response boils down to this: I am a writer. End of story.

Two phrases have been going through my mind this week. The first is a tag line from the Self-Publishing Podcast: "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." The other is the more internal voice: when you're just starting out, you have to understand your limitations and adjust your expectations.

The do-it-yourself mantra is pretty obvious. I’m on the final touches of readying WADING INTO WAR for publication this month. For all of you who have already done this, I’m now in the decidedly unsexy part of the process: reviewing, tweaking, checking the spelling and punctuation, and all the other stuff like that. I spent my off-day yesterday tinkering with Scrivener. I’ve used the program for years--and highly recommend it--but I have never had the reason to use all the compile features. It took me all morning yesterday but I finally, FINALLY!, figured out all the buttons and boxes to check and uncheck in order to produce the desired type of ebook. I ended up writing my own procedures that I am now able to follow with few headaches. I count that as a win.

Experience. The more you do something, the better at it you get. I had to remember that as I kept updating and building the website. It was in this arena where my second phrase really took hold.

There’s a website I see in my head. I know that I’ll ultimately get there. I’m not there yet. I very much want it to be where it’ll ultimately be in a few months’ time, but I simply don’t have the experience in HTML to do it right now. Moreover, I don’t have the time to learn right now. Day job. Home life. Reading some. Watching something. Writing new book. Editing next book. There’s a lot to do and only 24 hours in a day.

So I have had to adjust my expectations on how to structure the website. I’ve got it to a place where I’m okay with it, at least as a beta release. But it’s a tad frustrating to know where you want to go, know that you’ll eventually get there, but that the road will be long. At least, however, I’m on the road.

For that, I’m quite content.


Best Podcast of the Week

Simon Whistler’s Rocking Self-Publishing, Episode 81 with Chris Fox. This interview can make the dreams swell up big in your heart. Lots and lots of great material in this episode, especially on how you can apply the startup mentality to independent publishing.

Wading Into War: Cover Reveal

I'll admit something to y'all: this is a bit exciting for me. Well, let me take that back. This is a lot exciting.

When you are in the position of creating cover art for your debut book, two things run through your mind, at least they did for me. One is the knowledge that the cover will be the first cover for a book you've written that the world will see. For better or worse, the reading public will identify you with that cover. I know I do that with the authors I like. When I think of Dennis Lehane, I think of MYSTIC RIVER and the hardback cover art.

His other covers flow through my mind but only after I see that 2001 novel. The same holds true for movies. This is always the first image I think of regarding Star Wars.

With all of that pressure in mind, my first cover had to be something of which I was proud. More to the point, it had to be the physical embodiment of what I saw in my head. WADING INTO WAR is a period piece, set in 1940. That’s deep in the heart of the pulp era and I wanted a cover that reflected that vibe. Moreover, I wanted cover *art*, a picture that illustrated a scene in the book. Lastly, I wanted to put my own stamp on it, to bring my quirky vision to this project.

So here it is.

 

Font: With this being a period piece, I wanted the title font and the shape of the letters to give the reader a clue to the contents. I think art deco is a great font and it instantly sprang to mind when I envisioned the cover.

Colors: Most of the old pulp magazine covers blared out of the newsstand with vivid colors. I, on the other hand, wanted a more black-and-white image. I’ll be honest that the style of the Batman Animated Series was my inspiration for the figures. The primary color is yellow, partly for its ability to stand out in a crowded ebook field but also as an homage to the old pulp magazines that had a monocolor cover with art on top of it. The blood is the jump color to let the reader know that dude in the house means business.

Logo: Initially, I wasn’t going to have the logo on the cover. Then, after my last markup to my graphic artist, I realized I had a blank space. Enter the logo. And, frankly, it hearkens back to the things I first read: comics. Again, a deliberate choice.

The Graphic Designer

Speaking of all this, you may wonder if I’m a multi-talented renaissance man who can write as well as design. Wonder no longer: that ain’t me. But I had the perfect solution.

A good friend of mine and former co-worker, Ike, was more than happy to accommodate me. You have already seen his good work with the logo for Quadrant Fiction Studio and now you have evidence of what he can do for a book cover.

When Ike and I worked together at our day job, I used to joke that he was halfway finished with a project before I was even finished telling him what needed to be done. He’s an intuitive artist who can give you exactly what you want but will also guide you into making better decisions. He fully cooperated with me in all my weird ways of trying to describe what I wanted. We no longer work at the same day job and our homes are across Houston from each other so we relied on emails and Skype calls. He never batted an eye, even when I’d ask for a little tweaks multiple times. Ike was nonplussed. In fact, the more this project went on, the more enthusiasm we both showed for this final product.

And it shows. I can think of no better compliment for Ike than this: without him and his willingness to work with me and his excellent ability to create something from nothing, this cover, this work of art that I saw in my head, would not be real. It would still be inside my head.

But it isn’t. It’s out here, for all the world see. Thanks, man, for making a dream a reality.

(Originally published at Do Some Damage, 7 February 2015)

Announcing Quadrant Fiction Studio

Today is the day the world learns what I’ve been doing for the past few months and I find it wholly appropriate to remove the curtain here at Do Some Damage.

Quadrant Fiction Studio is my new publishing company through which I will release the novels and other tales I write. I’m planning on releasing the first book next month. I'll announce the title and display the cover image in the coming weeks.

I've got a landing page at the new website: www.quadrantfictionstudio.com. I'll redesign it to its normal view when Book 01 launches. But you can see my vision for this endeavor.

Picking the Name

I like the letter Q and decided to use it as the logo. So I started there. Next came the name. “Quadrant” was the first word that came to mind, Quadrant Press, that is. Well, that’s already taken. Quiver Press was another. I thought “thing that holds arrows” but the existing Quiver Press is rather more adult. Quill, of course, where I could have been cute and made the tail of the Q be the end of a feathered quill. Yeah, not good. And I even drew a picture of that one. Quire was one of my favorites--think of the in-person options of giving away quires of printed work--but it was suggested that more folks would think of the singing group.

All this time I was using the word "press" or "publisher.” Then, I started thinking of other terms. I kind of like the word “practice” as in “law practice,” but didn’t think “writing practice” sounded good. Artists, like my wife, work in a studio and that sounded better: Quadrant Studio. But, as you can imagine, that brings up visions of artists and not necessarily writing. So I threw the word “fiction” in there and viola.

The name also stood in for my vision of what I wanted to do. While this is a mystery blog, I read and watch more genres than just mysteries. I like westerns and science fiction and pulp and romances and historicals and...well, you can see how that might spiral out of control. My original idea was to have a “publishing house” (i.e., Quadrant) with four imprints, each with a specific genre and an associated ‘house name’ as authors, one of which was to be my own. I solicited the opinions of trusted folks and they steered me away from that. In the age of independent publishing, it’s really not necessary.

But the Quadrant idea held. So I plan on keeping the three main genres--mystery, western, science fiction--and leave the ‘fourth quadrant’ for whatever strikes my fancy. We’ll just see how close my fancy is to the buying/reading public.

Designing the Logo

When I had the four-genre thing going, I imagined I’d tie each genre with a color. Thus, I’d have a logo that represented that. It was a colorful logo, too. Much like the existing one, but with each ‘square’ a different color. Again, I got the opinion of trusted folks, including friends who are graphic designers. They liked it, but thought it looked like the logo of a kid’s book. Oops. Not the vibe I was going for.

So, I developed the logo you see now. It’s clean, two-colored, and relatively simple. Plus it has the benefit of fitting into the little squares on Facebook and Twitter. And, in the future, it’ll fit nicely on the spines of printed books.

Where Does the Road Lead Next?

I am busily working on the text of Book #1 and cleaning it up. I have a graphic designer who is creating my first book cover. If the stars align correctly, this first novella will be released next month. It’ll be electronic first with a print run coming later in the year. I’ll be using all available sources: Amazon, Kobo, Nook, iBooks, and CreateSpace.

From there, I have six other completed manuscripts. I’m writing a new one these first two months of 2015. I plan on maintaining a consistent output in the coming months and years.

It’s amazing just how much goes into getting a new company off the ground. It’s a challenge. It’s a ton of work. It’s a little scary. But most of all, it’s fun. So far, I’m enjoying every minute of it.

I will certainly make mistakes and they’ll all be in the public eye. C’est la vie. That’s the risk I take by doing this. But that means I’ll get the rewards, too.

It’s an exciting time here at the offices of Quadrant Fiction Studio. If you've got a moment today, head on over to the landing page and let me know what you think. Comments are welcome, good ones as well as constructive ones. It’s the only way I’ll learn what I’m doing right and what I can improve on.

I’ll leave you with the question that might end up being my theme: What Quadrant Are You?

(originally published at Do Some Damage, 31 January 2015)

Favorite Cover Songs

Over on the excellent music podcast, Pods and Sods, today's episode was about favorite cover songs. Have a listen to the episode then head on over to their Facebook page and join the conversation.

Here is my off-the-cuff list:*

My choices:

I'm a Man - Chicago Transit Authority (original: Spencer Davis Group) - Much more energetic, with a 64-bar latin percussion break. The version they were performing in the late 80s/early 90s with Dawayne Bailey was particularly good.

Little Wing - Sting (Jimi Hendrix) - Heard the Sting version first and prefer it mainly because of the Gil Evans arrangement and slowed down guitar solo that morphs into the soprano sax solo.

In Your Eyes - Jeffrey Gaines (Peter Gabriel) - This is a cover that does NOT better the original but it's so unique that I often gravitate to it.

Black Crow - Diana Krall (Joni Mitchell) - Krall's 2004 CD found her writing her own material with her then-new husband, Elvis Costello. This song, however, has a lot of nice souring piano flourishes that echo Vince Guaraldi, a pleasant guitar solo, and Krall playing around with her phrasing.

River - Robert Downey, Jr. (Joni Mitchell) - Didn't realize I'd have to Mitchell songs here but oh well. I like Downey's vocal stylings (love his cover of "Smile" as well) and this arrangement, with cello, is one of the songs I always go to around the 20th of December when I'm just about tired of the standard Christmas songs.

Smells Like Teen Spirit - The Bad Plus (Nirvana) - I was tempted to pick the Paul Anka jazz arrangement [where he covered a lot of rock songs with a jazz band) but opted for this song which is the tune that put The Bad Plus on my radar. Piano, bass, and drums. That's it. They take the song from the standard instrumental arrangement into a dizzing array of improvs on the theme. Sometimes you'd think they're just doing their own thing but they come back together at the end.

*I didn't include any Christmas tunes but there are a bunch I could have listed. The one that first comes to mind is Chicago's version of Little Drummer Boy. It is, for me, THE version. It's to the point where I hear the horn breaks Chicago wrote whenever I hear *another* version of LDB.

Book Review Club: Icerigger by Alan Dean Foster

(This is the February 2015 edition of Barrie Summy’s Book Review Club. For the complete list of fellow reviewers, click the link at the end of this review.)

If you’re looking forward to Star Wars: Episode VII later this year, then you can thank Alan Dean Foster for writing Icerigger.

Icerigger, published 1974, was the third book a young Alan Dean Foster published after The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972) and Bloodhype (1973). The story features two human heroes: Ethan Fortune, a salesman in his twenties, who is on the way to the remote ice world of Tran-Ky-Ky. Skua September is a hulk of a man with a shock of white hair and has seen his share of the wonders the Humanx Commonwealth has to offer. These two men, who don’t know each other, are, like all great heroes throughout literature, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While on the space liner orbiting Tran-Ky-Ky, Ethan stumbles into a kidnapping-gone-wrong of financier Hellespont du Kane and his daughter, Colette. The trio, along with another pair of humans, are shuttled into a lifepod...where a very drunk Skua is sleeping off a drunk. He fouls things up for the kidnappers and then things go really bad. They crash on Tran-Ky-Ky thousands of miles away from Brass Monkey, the one town the Thranx Commonwealth had established, the one town where the kidnappers were going to ransom du Kane.

Very soon thereafter, Skua appoints a reluctant Ethan as leader. Together, including one of the kidnappers--Skua took out the other one--they have to figure out a way to get to Brass Monkey, the only Humanx settlement on Tran Ky-Ky. They befriend a group of the native species, Tran, a humanoid-cat hybrid with fur all over their bodies and claws on their feet that have adapted to their environment (think the middle two claws having curled under the feet to basically make skates).

What follows is a traditional adventure tale that might have taken place here on earth except that the planet’s oceans are all frozen. It’s a clever twist on the old swashbuckling adventure yarns where the characters may face traditional hazards--a warring tribe attacks the Tran group helping Ethan and Skua--but with the ice, Foster gets to turn a siege battle on its ear. You don’t get a whole lot about the larger Humanx Commonwealth that you do from his most famous series about Pip and Flinx, but it is referenced. It's more like a peek into a larger world that you can explore elsewhere.

While I enjoyed Icerigger, but it's not without issues. For a science fiction story, there's not a whole lot of science fiction there. Sure, there's an alien world with a new alien species but the book is more like a pirate story than a true SF yarn. Actually the one story that kept coming to mind was Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars. You see, both stories derive their structure from a main human character (John Carter, Ethan in Icerigger) who find themselves on an alien world and must Do Something and encounter strange things along the way. Again, what I expected was some more science fictional because, you know, of Star Wars.

The reason I bring up Star Wars is that Icerigger was the novel that landed Alan Dean Foster on George Lucas’s radar. Back when Lucas was making the first film, he and his team read Icerigger and liked it so much that they approached Foster to gauge his interest in ghost writing the novelization of the movie and an original sequel. Foster agreed. Back in the day, when my entire young life was consumed with Star Wars, I read that novelization more than once never knowing it was Foster. I also read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the first original novel back in 1978. That’s when I locked in on Foster and he became my first favorite SF author. He helped secure the Star Wars legacy for me a millions of others and it all started with Icerigger.

The adventure of Ethan Fortune and Skua September continue with Mission to Moulokin (1979) and The Deluge Drivers (1987). I’m definitely jumping right into the second book now because I want to see how this adventure ends.

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Book Review Club: Plotting: A Novelist's Workout Guide by Aaron Allston

(This is the April 2005 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For a complete list, click the link at the end of this review.)

A couple weeks back on Do Some Damage, I wrote about one of the rabbit trails we all take through the shrubbery that is the internet. The thing at the end of my trail was the wonderful happenstance discovery of Aaron Allston’s book, Plotting: A Novelist’s Workout Guide. For those who may have missed it, the following text from the opening page is what hooked me:

Do any of these statements sound familiar?

"I come up with good ideas, but I can't develop them into complete novels." [Yes! That’s me!]
"I'm going along fine with my novel, and then it just stops. I can't get it moving again." [Again, yeah!]
"I know what happens from start to finish, but I can't figure out what it's really about." [Sometime, yeah.]
"I know what's supposed to happen and what it's supposed to mean, but my story is just not working." [Still me, a bit]
"My novel is missing something and I can't figure out what it is." [Sure.]
If any of the above applies to you, Plotting: A Novelist's Workout Guide can help. [From Plotting: A Novelist's Workout Guide, page 1]

Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve finished this book and it is exactly what I needed. You see, I’m stuck on a story that I’m writing and I’m trying to figure out which way it needs to go (bullet point #2). Moreover, bullet point #1 is a thing I struggle with as well.

Allston breaks down his book into two large sections. The third section is the appendix. Part one is theory. Here is where he lays out, in detail, many of the concepts most of us already know: What is a scene, the basics of plotting, the four elements of plots, etc. But where this book differs from others I’ve read is in two very important ways. One, Allston gives you exercises! Yes, you have homework. Some of these exercises might be basic, but for a beginning writer (or one who might be stuck), they are fantastic. There are exercises in each chapter (four chapters per section) and, while they start out as random exercises, they gradually turn to your own work. That’s a nice way of coming at your novel--in-progress with something akin to outside eyes.

But where this book really earns it’s keep is the sample novel. To illustrate his points, Allston uses lots of on-the-fly examples. Along the way, however, he starts a novel from scratch. He poses an idea for a story and takes it from idea all the way through two to three outlines! This was like a light bulb went off in my head. I’ve heard talk of outlining over and over and I could not get past the idea of the high school-type outline with Roman numerals. I was a bit ahead of the curve with my use of note cards, but seeing Allston ask the questions writers are suppose to ask, answer them, and then build his plot was so enlightening. Especially when he got to the outlining stage, just reading and trying to absorb all that is present in the outline is both daunting and exciting.

The book has done something I expected it to do: I couldn't wait to finish it so I could start applying it’s teachings on my own work.

Allston, who recently passed away, has left writers of all stages of development with a fantastic primer on how to plot and prepare for writing.

You can get the book via Amazon or at ArcherRat Publishing’s website (where you can get the epub or a PDF) If you head over there, Allston also posted some Author’s Notes where he examines the process he used to write a few of his short stories. If you get the Amazon Kindle version, you can highlight and annotate the book to your heart's content. I know I sure did. Afterwards, you can go and get your notes from the web and keep some of Allston's checklists on your desk while you write. Perfect!

This book, in its circuitous route, arrived at the time I most needed it. I'm now looking forward to applying Allston's processes in all my writing.

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