The Gospel of Creativity by Kevin Smith

Today at DoSomeDamage, I talk about seeing Kevin Smith live in Houston and what I thought of the show: http://www.dosomedamage.com/2015/08/the-gospel-of-creativity-by-kevin-smith.html

Tangible Research

Today over at Do Some Damage​, I talk about tangible research and my trip to the Galveston Railroad Museum. http://www.dosomedamage.com/2015/08/tangible-research.html.

Ten Years Ago Today...

I’m a sucker for anniversaries and commemorations. It’s probably an offshoot of my love of history or, rather, perhaps my love of history makes me keenly aware of dates and things. Ten years ago this summer, my family and I took a vacation. It was on that vacation that I began writing what would become my first novel. It’s called Treason at Hanford and it features Harry Truman as the protagonist.

Not knowing how to write a book, I fell back on my experience writing my thesis. A key to that endeavor was a common file in which I kept the status for my professor. I figured if it worked for a thesis, it should also work as a novel. I did not want to take my laptop—vacation, remember—so I bought a good, old-fashioned composition book. I also brought some post-it notes, pens of many colors, and a pencil.

Ten years ago this coming Monday, 27 July, I started. It was a brainstorming session. I had the vision of a single scene. This scene was crucial and I made a decision that has led to a pattern ten years on: I would write all first drafts chronologically. This scene took place later in the book. With my copious notes and in this comp book and obsessive dating, I finally got to that scene on 21 May 2006. It was a long wait, but it was oh so earned.

I have read through this comp book/journal more than once in the past few years. I go back to it when I was feeling particularly discouraged in 2008-2013. You see, while I wrote this first book from 27 July 2005 to 1 June 2006, I didn’t start and finish another long project until May-June 2013. In these years, I used to joke that it’s taken me longer NOT to write my second book than it did to write my first. That was a bad stretch, I’ll admit, one in which I dreamed about writing and wrote about writing much more than actually writing.

That last thing was something I swore not to do once I started back up in May 2013. I us

And I’ve rarely done it since. In the past two years, I’ve started and completed seven longer projects and I’m not sure how many short stories. Maybe I needed the discouraging time to get me going. I don’t know. There are days, here in 2015, when I wonder what my professional author life might have been if I had actually completed books from 2006 to 2013, but I don’t dwell there. I see 1 May 2013 as my Writer’s New Year’s Day. That was the day I decided I would pick up the pen again, write, and complete things.

And I’ve not looked back since.

But it all started ten years ago on Monday. 27 July 2005. One of the most important days of my writing life.

So, do y’all have a specific date that you can point to and say your writing career started on that day?

Ten Years Ago Today...

I’m a sucker for anniversaries and commemorations. It’s probably an offshoot of my love of history or, rather, perhaps my love of history makes me keenly aware of dates and things. Ten years ago this summer, my family and I took a vacation. It was on that vacation that I began writing what would become my first novel. It’s called Treason at Hanford and it features Harry Truman as the protagonist.

Not knowing how to write a book, I fell back on my experience writing my thesis. A key to that endeavor was a common file in which I kept the status for my professor. I figured if it worked for a thesis, it should also work as a novel. I did not want to take my laptop—vacation, remember—so I bought a good, old-fashioned composition book. I also brought some post-it notes, pens of many colors, and a pencil.

Ten years ago this coming Monday, 27 July, I started. It was a brainstorming session. I had the vision of a single scene. This scene was crucial and I made a decision that has led to a pattern ten years on: I would write all first drafts chronologically. This scene took place later in the book. With my copious notes and in this comp book and obsessive dating, I finally got to that scene on 21 May 2006. It was a long wait, but it was oh so earned.

I have read through this comp book/journal more than once in the past few years. I go back to it when I was feeling particularly discouraged in 2008-2013. You see, while I wrote this first book from 27 July 2005 to 1 June 2006, I didn’t start and finish another long project until May-June 2013. In these years, I used to joke that it’s taken me longer NOT to write my second book than it did to write my first. That was a bad stretch, I’ll admit, one in which I dreamed about writing and wrote about writing much more than actually writing.

That last thing was something I swore not to do once I started back up in May 2013. I us

And I’ve rarely done it since. In the past two years, I’ve started and completed seven longer projects and I’m not sure how many short stories. Maybe I needed the discouraging time to get me going. I don’t know. There are days, here in 2015, when I wonder what my professional author life might have been if I had actually completed books from 2006 to 2013, but I don’t dwell there. I see 1 May 2013 as my Writer’s New Year’s Day. That was the day I decided I would pick up the pen again, write, and complete things.

And I’ve not looked back since.

But it all started ten years ago on Monday. 27 July 2005. One of the most important days of my writing life.

So, do y’all have a specific date that you can point to and say your writing career started on that day?

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.

Click icon for more

book review blogs

@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)