While I’ve been candid in interviews on other websites and in my writings on this blog, I’ll never write an autobiography or memoir. There are logical reasons for this decision.

Let me clear up some definitions before I start listing the reasons. Amazon conflates autobiography and memoir. Maybe they don’t know the difference—or their bots don’t. A memoir is a literary work about one aspect of a person’s life. An autobiography is about a person’s entire life, at least up to the time of writing. Word length is irrelevant; time is of the essence.

Now for the reasons. First, as an introvert and author, and in spite of my “internet presence,” I’m a private person. Many details of my life aren’t even known by my own family and friends!

Second, I’m a fiction writer. My life, or parts of it, won’t make a good story that could possibly entertain readers. I suppose my life is unusual in some sense because I’ve had some interesting experiences, some good, some bad, and I’ve made some unusual choices, but I think my life is boring compared to what I read and write about. I live vicariously in books and their characters, either mine or other writers’.

Third, I’m not egotistical. Just the opposite. I’d rather be forgotten. OK, maybe remembered a bit for my fiction writing and my academic papers, but I don’t want an autobiography or memoir floating around that pretends to summarize my entire life or parts of it in one book.

Celebs write memoirs (or their ghostwriters do); because they’re still celebs and not on Death’s door step, they’re not ready for the autobiography, I guess.  I’m not a celeb. People who have suffered through trying experiences and prevailed also write memoirs. Mine aren’t inconsequential, but others have suffered through similar ones—and I can offer no special advice for future sufferers. People who have done interesting things also write autobiographies and memoirs. Modesty aside, I’ve done interesting things, like living in South America for quite a while, but again there’s nothing earthshaking about that.

I might write an autobiography, though, and just make it accessible to my wife. That’s a personal thing and akin to leaving photos, diaries, and journals so family historians can peruse them if they feel so inclined. I’d try to leave more info than those ancestry DNA sites. But I won’t publish a memoir or autobiography. No way!

All that said, biographies are generally more interesting than autobiographies, if only because they’re usually written with historical perspective after the person’s death. I might write one of those about someone else someday…just for the hell of it. I’ve read a lot of them….and writing them has to be a challenge!

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Comments are always welcome.

Goin’ the Extra Mile. I put Mary Jo through many challenging situations in #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” The U.S. made the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), Russia stole them, and now China wants them bad enough to kidnap Mary Jo and her family. This new ebook is available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Fiction authors often kill their characters. In mysteries and crime stories, there are victims. In thrillers, good guys and bad die. In sci-fi, there’s also violence and death. So I performed an auto-survey and asked myself which characters did I want to keep alive and which ones did I reluctantly kill.

I considered both protagonists and antagonists (villains) and came up with a list. While I won’t divulge that list (too many spoilers), let me explain why it hurts, even for the villains: if authors do a decent job with characterization, their characters come alive. An author knows them far better than most real people. In novels, and in series, in particular, characters become real. Mostly humans, but in sci-fi they can be realistic ETs and in fantasy they can even be dragons. Readers can experience this reality too, and often do, but the authors who create these characters usually have a special bond with them.

The latter is clearly true for main characters. Often a novel is written in the third-person point-of-view (POV) of one character, and the author gets inside that character’s head. It’s a mindreading exercise in a sense that readers can appreciate and no movie can capture. But it’s especially true if the book is written in the first-person POV, at least for a time, as I do with my Detective Castilblanco. I am him and he is me for the duration of the novel.

But this bond often occurs with villains too. Life is often gray with mixes of good and evil. A good villain, “good” in the sense of being a well-developed character, is complex like that. While I don’t feel as strong a bond with Vladimir Kalinin, who starts his literary life as Chen and Castilblanco’s foe in The Midas Bomb but is even present in Soldiers of God, he exhibits this complexity and also allowed me to get into his mind in third-person POV.

Strong characters often lead to series, of course. Not only do readers want to read more about them, but authors also want to write more about them. Many characters who are killed are transient ones, although they should still be complex and interesting. They give up their lives so that the story can move forward. Readers (and maybe writers) are more shocked when the main character dies—maybe not so much for villains but certainly for the “good guys.” The decision to kill a character should not be taken lightly in any case.

Modern fiction often isn’t about “living happily ever after,” though. It has to seem real, and real life isn’t a fairy tale. Readers have to be prepared for this; authors have to include it in their fiction. And we can all celebrate the great characters of fiction who live on in books after the authors are long gone.

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Comments are welcome.

Did you miss the sale? Accompanying the free novella “You Know I’m Watching” that ended last week, the first six books in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” were successively placed on sale. #5, The Collector, and #6, Family Affairs, are still on sale until January 6–$0.99 each on Smashwords. The first four books and #7, Gaia and the Goliaths, aren’t on sale, but their retail prices are reasonable and equivalent to the sale prices of Big Five ebooks. Hours of exciting mystery and thrills await you, dear readers!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” contains Full Medical (the clones), Evil Agenda (one clone + one mutant), and No Amber Waves of Grain (both clones and mutants). Sirena, the mutant introduced in Evil Agenda, represents an extreme example of my strong, smart female characters.

From the young Shashibala Garcia (The Secret Lab) and Asako Kobayashi (The Secret of the Urns) to the mature Esther Brookstone (Rembrandt’s Angel), I celebrate what I call the secular strong-willed feminine, as opposed to Dan Brown’s religious “sacred feminine” and the more generic “divine feminine.” It’s been a long time coming, but at the end of the 20^th century and in the 21^st, women are finally getting the respect they deserve, in real life and in fiction.

I’m pleased with women assuming power in the U.S. and around the world, for example. I’ve always thought that the world would be better off with women in charge, and I still do, more so than ever before. They can more easily look beyond testosterone-driven greed and power and see that humanity should be one happy family on this planet we’ve leased for a while. Yes, they’re assuming power now, but my female characters have been doing that for some time.

Real life and fiction have both influenced these portrayals in my books. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing quite a few strong and smart women during my many years of observing human behavior. I’ve encountered many more in my reading. Both represent a lifetime of admiring the strong-willed feminine.

While I believe Deaver’s best book is Garden of Beasts, I admire his character Amelia Sachs in the Lincoln Rhyme series; she influenced my portrayal of Dao-Ming Chen (“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”) and Mary Jo Melendez (“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries”). (By the way, one reviewer of the second edition of The Midas Bomb complained that all female characters in that book were bimbos, so I’d like to know what he thinks of Amelia. The reviewer didn’t see the complexity of protagonist Detective Chen or villain Lydia Karpov, so he probably wouldn’t see Amerlia’s either, but I salute him–he at least took the time to write a long review.) Heinlein’s Friday was a big influence too, especially for Sirena (if you’ve read Heinlein’s sci-fi thriller, you’ll know why). Although I’ve said that Esther Brookstone is like a 21^st century (and slightly younger) Miss Marple, my portrayal of her is influenced by many female sleuths, past and present. And, of course, all those strong and smart women I’ve encountered in my life influence my characterizations.

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Some idiot in Hoboken wasn’t satisfied recently with the placement of the Christmas tree and wreath over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. He said it was offensive to his eyes. The NYC Council put it to a vote—of course, the only ones who voted to change things were equally crazy.

Every so often some nuts will want to dress dogs and horses when they’re out in public (somehow cats escape being their targets). And a certain famous basketball player claimed that NASA astronauts never landed on the moon, comparable to those who believe the Earth is flat (there’s a society for that).

Two comments: These people have too much time on their hands. And there are far better causes for them to spend their time on.

Such crazy events associated with crazy persons make writers’ lives difficult. First, the writer/journalists who have to report on them have to decide how to approach those stories. Should they play it straight as if this were normal behavior? (Note the use of the subjunctive—it’s not normal behavior.) Or, do they make fun of it (greatly deserved) and point out the waste of time and money spent on their craziness? (Of course, I’m crazy to spend time on it here…but what else should I write on New Year’s Day, a slow news day?)

These persons and events also present fiction writers with major problems. These people are characters in the pejorative sense, and the events are weird and crazy, to say the least. Should a fiction writer include such characters and events in their fiction?

I’ll say yes with reluctance. Especially for lighthearted comedies. But even serious stories need characters whose behaviors represent outliers in the human behavioral statistical spectrum. In fiction, extremes are often the norm. While authors often start with ordinary, boring persons as characters, these persons often end up doing extraordinary things as they react to extraordinary events. And many times the serious characters can play off the crazy ones, and the crazy ones can relieve tension.

But reality is so often so much stranger than fiction that authors have to be careful when they write about crazy weirdness. All fiction has to be believable, including fantasy (within the “rules” established in the fantasy world created by the author).

Still, let’s face it: many readers and writers use fiction as an escape from the ordinary, mundane lives they live, and maybe from other ordinary people and events. That certainly is one motivation for both my reading and writing; the satisfaction I derive from telling stories that hopefully entertain a few readers is another.

But I’ll certainly keep writing about crazy, strange people and crazy, strange events in my stories, knowing full well that the craziness and strangeness just mimics reality.

Do you feel the same way?

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Happy New Year to All! Comments are welcome.

I don’t often write comedy, but the first part of Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape has a few stories that might tickle your funny bone…for example, the ghost gang and baklava stories. This collection of speculative fiction even contains a novella, “From the Mother World.” And if you want to start the New Year with a freebie, Volume Two is available as a free download—see the list of all the free PDFs on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Persons I meet at book events and other social situations often ask “How do you get your ideas?” after learning I’m a full-time fiction writer. It’s a ubiquitous question that I’m sure other writers are asked. I certainly prefer that question to “Do you make any money writing?” (not much) or “I don’t have time to even read books, so how do you find time to write them?” (no comment here).

My answers to that first question vary, but there are some general themes. First, I can say that I’ve had a lifetime of experiences and observations; I’ve seen and heard a lot. In other words, I note what’s going on around me. Second, when I see people doing things, I ask myself why are they doing them. What motivates people? Why do they respond as they do? And so forth.

I’m not a good mixer at social functions, but I am an observer. If I were to mix, I couldn’t be an unbiased observer. You can learn more from seeing and listening to what’s going on around you.

Third, I’m continuously organizing all that I’ve observed in my mind to come up with story ideas. That might involve imagining those people I’ve observed in different situations and foreign settings. It can also involve putting myself in others’ places as I write in the point-of-view of a character.

Storytelling is mostly about observations mixed with imagination. There’s no mystery to it because it’s something the human brain has been doing since prehistory. The people who are addicted to doing it are now called fiction writers. The people who do it all the time are full-time writers. And those who enjoy all these stories are now called readers.

Storytelling used to be verbal, or visual, if we include cave paintings. Both media are limited because those who enjoy the stories never can get into the heads of the characters. (Some movies try to avoid this limitation of the visual by having actors speak their thoughts. Shakespeare did this in his plays with his soliloquys.) Gutenberg unwittingly changed all this. With books readers can participate more fully in the storytelling experience, knowing characters from the stories more profoundly than ever before.

So modern fiction writers must be observers of actions and reactions but they have to imagine what’s going on inside people’s heads too. In short, we have to be amateur psychologists and psychiatrists who discover the possible reasons for why people do certain things. I’ve often thought that people would be better off talking to a fiction writer rather than a mental health professional for that reason!

But, returning to that initial question, where does the creativity come in? Clancy said that fiction has to seem real. That’s where the creativity lies: Taking all those observations and guesses about why people do things and creating a new reality, an extrapolation that is both new and entertaining but still recognizable to the reader. The ability to do this is both innate and learned. Ideas for stories abound, but turning them into good literature requires some skill.

It’s often said that we should never stop learning. That’s particularly true about writing. Finding ideas for stories is only part of the craft. Learning the skills for turning these ideas into stories into stories is the rest. While people rarely ask “How did you learn these skills?” or even “How did you learn to write?”, these are important questions too. There are no simple answers for them either because what works for one writer doesn’t for another.

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Comments are always welcome!

Goin’ the Extra Mile: “After I left the Navy, I became a security guard back east.  The company had some Top Secret Pentagon projects.  Some were designed to create super soldiers—Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans AKA MECHs—and specialized smart armor for them.” The U.S. made the MECHs, Russia stole them, and now China wants them…and will kidnap Mary Jo Melendez and her family to get them! If you have blood pressure problems, this mystery/thriller novel could be dangerous. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc). “I was captivated by the end of the first chapter and I couldn’t stop reading.”—Valerie Padrnos in her Amazon review.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Some are about the business of writing. Others are about marketing books. Some are actually about writing. Still others are inspirational with posts written by cheerleaders.

I don’t know how to classify mine. A bit of all of the above is offered here. Book and movie reviews. Free fiction. Author interviews. Posts on reading, writing, and the publishing business.  Guest posts are allowed—I’ve had none, maybe because I don’t pay for them? I give my time willingly to run what amounts to a little online newspaper that’s called a writer’s blog. Time I have; money I don’t.

This weekly presence of mine on the worldwide web started over ten years ago with a lot of op-ed articles about current events. I made a 2018 New Year’s resolution to stop spending time on those because they usually needed a lot of research, so everything now has something to do with writing. This blog isn’t unique, but it covers a lot of ground.

Every author should have a blog. Even if authors stick to how-to articles about writing, publishing, and marketing, their blogs add to their brand. And, because every writer is unique, most of their blogs are also unique too. Moreover, they all add to communications between readers and writers if comments are allowed, giving meaning to “Join the Conversation!”

And that’s a sticking point. To make a comment, the wannabe commentator has to hurdle several barriers. The “I am not a robot” tests are ubiquitous and often hard for the visually impaired, and often made more difficult many times because there are tiny pics where you’re supposed to look for something but its description is off the page! Other websites require a login or subscription to a newsletter. I often resist these encumbrances, although I’ve had to subscribe to several unwanted newsletters as a result of this practice.

The reason for the barriers is obvious, of course: spam! There are many types, the worst being for sex toys, ED drugs, and porn. That’s why there are often two barriers for commentators, the “I am not a robot” test and a confirmation via email response from the wannabe commentator. (This also often occurs when one actually wants to subscribe to a newsletter.)

Because I use WordPress in this blog, only patience is required to comment: I have to approve your first comment! After I do so, you become a trusted commentator, but be advised I can zap you if you betray that trust. And be advised that I’m smart enough to figure out, often by the email address, whether the commentator should be trusted. I’m definitely not a robot, and key words a spammer often uses to get by the bots are like red flags waved at a bull in my case.

Authors should add new content to their blogs, at least an article per week. The articles don’t have to be long; use the “more” button (if you have one) for longer articles. Once an author gets the hang of it, it’s easy to come up with something to say once per week. Authors should consider writing blog articles just another writing experience they can enjoy. In other words, it’s not a chore. Best of all, it gives their readers more perspectives beyond the books, a peek into this writing life.

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Comments are always welcome!

Goin’ the Extra Mile: “My husband Mario sometimes thinks I have a death wish. As I sprawled on the hood of a Honda Accord, left-hand fingers hooked into the windshield gutter and hanging on for dear life, I decided he has a point.” The U.S. made the MECHs, Russia stole them, and now China wants them…and will kidnap Mary Jo Melendez and her family to get them! If you have blood pressure problems, this mystery/thriller novel could be dangerous. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc). “I was captivated by the end of the first chapter and I couldn’t stop reading.”—Valerie Padrnos in hr Amazon review.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Ralph Breaks the Internet is a funny movie about a serious topic. It’s not a movie for little kids, by the way. I’m sure they’ll have no idea what a TED talk is, and young computer users will also have no idea about the many references to general culture, social media, and websites contained in the movie (have they seen King Kong?) Maybe the movie is for computer-savvy young adults from a certain age on to where we find elders who aren’t computer users beyond email and maybe Skyping with family and friends. The mix of real and fake internet companies can be confusing to most of us computer savvy people too. But breaking the internet is a moot point—it’s already broken!

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t attend an EU meeting about excesses in social media—doesn’t even bother to cancel. Sheryl Sandberg launches a secret campaign against George Soros to investigate his finances—he committed the sin of attacking Facebook. And Facebook has been caught using the information it’s gathered to favor friends and punish enemies.

Google is fined by the EU for a multitude of reasons. Facebook and Twitter put profit over morality by letting real fake news be plastered on everyone’s feeds, including that from the Russians designed to disrupt the U.S. electoral process. Wikileaks releases thousands of emails Russians hacked from DNC servers. At this writing, the RNC is claiming some unknown hacker invaded their databases.

Data mining firms collect information from your social media presence, text messages, and emails, and that list of data mining firms includes big names like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who also sell your information for profit. In fact, that’s their general business model; all those annoying ads flashing on your screen represent only a small part of their profits.

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About the time I published my first novel Full Medical (2006—now with a second edition in ebook format), I created this website. It was an expensive process. All of today’s free website options weren’t available back then, so I paid professionals to construct it. Maybe it’s showing its age now, but I still like the look and the content. Moreover, it provides what every author’s website should have.

As a bare minimum, authors should have a welcoming “home page” that says they’re writers in X, Y, and Z genres. Other web pages should describe their books and where to buy them, and how they can be contacted. As usual, the devil’s in the details.

I’m a minimalist. Instead of a separate web pages for upcoming events and new books, I put those things on the home page too. I’m afraid people will land there, scan the home page, and leave, so I want that info visible right up front.

Some website gurus recommend a web page for each book. That would never work in my case! No one is going to peruse 20+ web pages at a website. One option is to have a different web page for each genre, but I mix a lot of genres. I’m not particularly happy that my second page, the one with a list of all my books, looks crowded, but I can’t see a real solution—authors must display their bookcovers and book blurbs and provide click-throughs to buy each book. (I provide the latter for both titles and bookcovers. Some covers aren’t displayed because I only update that web page annually—I never learned HTML, and that’s what it takes with my old website.)

While authors can place a tiny bio on the home page, they really need a separate bio page. Readers like to learn about the authors they read. Sure, we tend to be introverted people who sit at our laptops a lot, but many of us have or had interesting lives (see the “Interviews” category in my blog for a peek at some of those interesting lives!). Offering that info to website visitors provides a nice human touch. “Hey, X is a cool guy (or gal)!” should be the visitor’s response who reads the bio. To the same end, authors should add a pic of themselves, even several.

Contact info must be provided. I have a separate contact page, but that info can be pushed off to the side or at the bottom of the home page or bio page (maybe both). Info should be provided about how to sign up for the author’s newsletter, if the author has one, also maybe in several places. I don’t know how many websites I’ve visited where the contact info is impossible to find.

I left the author’s blog to last. It’s where the author writes about his craft, maybe offers reviews of other authors’ books, and interviews other authors. The goal should be to put new content on that blog frequently. Authors don’t have change the other web pages much, so the blog keeps the website fresh and current. (I include movie reviews and free short stories too.)

How frequently do you need to post new material to your blog? Whatever your schedule permits. Motivate yourself by considering those blog articles part of your writing life. Every article you write hones your writing skills.

(I’ll have more info about blogs next week.)

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Comments are welcome!

The Secret of the Urns. Asako wants to write a thesis about the Fistians. But first she has to save them from Humans. A. B. Carolan’s new YA sci-fi mystery is full of action and intrigue and lessons about tolerance and cooperation. You can find the ebook on Amazon and Smashwords and all its associated retailers; there’s also a print version available on Amazon. The perfect holiday gift for young adults and adults who are young at heart.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I was doing the NY Times crossword the other evening. It contained clues for the words mercurial, venial, martial, ETs, jovial, and saturnine. While today these words mean capricious, forgivable, warlike, extraterrestrials, jolly, and gloomy (except for ETs, those were the clues), their common origin can be found among the names of planets, i.e. Latin. Maybe that only appeals to a sci-fi fan like me, but in general I find such word origins fascinating.

English is a mongrel language, of course, no matter what the Queen says. It grew, and still is growing, creating new words and borrowing old ones from other languages. As a result, English is rich in synonyms because it possesses many different words for the same idea. (Hog, swine, and pig are three examples.) Some words are just borrowed without change; others are modified. The richness of the language is writers’ best friend if English is their birth language; it’s probably their worst enemy if it’s not.

Etymology (which has a Greek origin) is the study of the origin of words. The origins of English words are fascinating because they tell stories of conquests and defeats, religious and other cultural upheavals, and changing national boundaries. All languages evolve, but English is continually mutating as well. Words come and go; meanings are created and destroyed.

David Crystal’s The Stories of English focuses on how words and their usages evolved; it’s not just an erudite work focusing on etymology. You can access any good dictionary and find out about the latter, but I find the stories in the words much more interesting. Crystal tells the stories in the words and makes their history come alive.

In my sci-fi books, the ones that probe into the far future, I talk about standard this and that—standard year, standard day, and so forth—but by Standard I just mean an extrapolation to what humanity’s “official language” becomes. It’s not English at all, but a mishmash of many terrestrial languages. (Many sci-fi writers do the same thing.) I’m not too precise about it, and I don’t try to create a new language as Tolkien did with Elfian (he even had seven dialects, I believe). This is all just a recognition that, whether we colonize the planets and nearby star systems, English is bound to borrow and change so much that it becomes unrecognizable. (Of course, faraway human colonies will have their own dialects of Standard, whatever the latter is. And the common roots might not be English at all!)

Languages are fluid if they live on. Only Aramaic, Latin, and other “dead languages” remain frozen in time. Academies and their purists who try to freeze a living language have a hopeless task. And that’s as it should be. And literature will also suffer parallel changes. In the future, Shakespeare’s work will sound as foreign as Chaucer’s. Or the major languages of diplomacy, business, and science will morph into one. Maybe that’s not progress, but it’s inevitable.

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Comments are welcome!

Goin’ the Extra Mile. The U.S. made the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), Russia stole them, and now China wants them…and will kidnap Mary Jo Melendez and her family to get them. Returning to the globe-trotting suspense and action of #1 with many of the same actors as #2, this new and third book in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” is a rousing finale for this trilogy. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliates (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, and so forth).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Every soldier risks his life on the battlefield. Every NFL player risks doing damage to his body and his brain.  Not long ago, a group of young men in a bachelor’s party; four of them and a guide lost their lives in a raging river in Costa Rica. We can argue about the logic of taking those risks, one for country and two for sport.

Although it’s not nearly in the same category as those listed above, every fiction author must face risk too. It’s the risk any creative person takes: the risk of rejection. Will the agent or acquisitions editor like my manuscript (MS)? Will readers like my published book?

The first step is to finish the MS, of course. There’s a risk there, but the potential failure is more personal and not so public. I don’t think NaNoWriMo helps much there, unless a writer takes some comfort that a lot of other writers are sweating and suffering (sounds a bit sadistic). There’s an analogy between novel writing and running a marathon: the main risk is giving up. The failure is mitigated by putting that story aside and working on a different novel or turning it into a short story or novella. The writer has still failed to finish a novel, but it’s not too terribly embarrassing.

Rejection is harder to take. Authors who self-publish don’t have to worry about this prior to publication, so I’ll return to them later in this article. Authors who want to traditionally publish have to either risk rejection with an acquisitions editor or with both agents and editors. Some publishers only “read” an MS offered by an agent, and, even then, the publisher’s editors still might not accept the MS.

Entering into the traditional publishing process are ancillary criteria like marketability and genre popularity, not just the quality of the MS (i.e. a good story well told). And because fiction reading tastes are always subjective, agents and editors’ choices are too. Of course, rejection at this level might also occur because the quality just isn’t there. And part of the author’s pain is often not knowing why the rejection occurs.

Authors keep risking these bruises to the egos, or they self-publish. Now comes the second question above: Will readers like the published novel? Every author, self-published or traditionally published, risks rejection by readers. Again, there are ancillary factors beyond the quality of the storytelling: editing, formatting, and cover art are the most important, but blurbs and reviews are other ones. Sometimes everything is perfect, but readers just don’t know the book exists. After all, more new books are published every year than can fit in a B&N book barn.

Again the pain is not knowing the reasons for failure. That pain’s intensity depends on our definition of failure, of course. I saw one stat (it might be worse now) that said most books, no matter how they’re published, sell fewer than three hundred copies. (I think that stat came from Amazon, so maybe they’re only counting sales on Amazon. No matter.) Whatever the stat currently is, most writers trying to live off book sales would be below the poverty level!

We have to take these risks and learn to live with our failures. In the early years of this century, I received over one thousand rejections from agents and acquisition editors. I kept honing my skills and self-published with POD publishers (many are still around, trying to survive—they have stiff competition from Amazon’s Create Space, now part of their KDP, although it has nothing to do with Kindles). I then went the ebook route with Carrick Publishing—I received lots of good TLC from them. But the upfront costs of editing, formatting, and cover art caused me to add traditional publishing with a small press to my business model (and to continue the TLC).

While I’d like to think I’ve improved since my first novel, modesty aside, those first books still look good and are current as ever, maybe more so now than before. With every new book I continue taking a risk. That’s part of the fun! Maybe publishing isn’t warfare, but it’s a contact sport. And I consider every book I write to be a success if at least one reader is entertained by it.

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Comments are always welcome!

Goin’ the Extra Mile. #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries,” this novel returns to the heart-pounding action of #1 and the intrigue and suspense of #2. The U.S. created the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), Russia stole them, and now China wants them…and will kidnap Mary Jo and her family to get them. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (Apple iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc).

Reviews on Goodreads and Amazon are all five-star ones so far. Here’s one: “I was captivated by the end of the first chapter, and I couldn’t stop reading. The author did an incredible job with character development and storyline. The twists and turns of this suspenseful read will have you turning pages as fast as possible. I was trying to guess what was going to happen next, but the author kept surprising me. I enjoyed every chapter of this book and look forward to reading more from this author”.—Valerie, in her Goodreads five-star review

In libris libertas!