Another Incredibly Exciting Announcement

Before Thriller Guy gets to the announcement, he would like to serve up another factoid in his series

of “Real Words and Phrases Used By Real Special Ops Guys.” This is a public service TG provides so you thriller writers can use snappy terminology that gives your novels that oh so important air of authenticity.

Everyone knows that when shooting a bad guy the “double tap” (pulling the trigger twice in rapid succession without changing your aiming point) is the de rigueur technique used by all the best Special Forces operators. The shots can be delivered to center mass or the head. Once the perp is down, it’s always wise to make sure he is permanently out of the game (how many scenes have we read where a supposedly dead guy comes back to life and gets off another couple of shots.) To make sure there’s no danger from a reanimated bad guy, a point-blank bullet to the forehead is the way to go; this shot is called “moonroofing.” Tuck that one in your lexicon and use it wisely. Aren’t you glad TG is here, always looking out for your best interests?

OK, here’s A. Appel with his Second Incredibly Exciting Announcement.

Thank you, TG. In my First Incredibly Exciting Announcement I informed the world that my new novel The Test of Time, was available for purchase in hard copy fromAmazon. I have now put the book up as a Kindle. You can buy a copy here.

This new book is a good entry point to the series, in that it’s a little different from the first five, though not different enough to put off any of the series long-time readers. So if you’re interested in time travel, historical novels or just a good read, give it a try. If you like it you’ve got five more books telling the story as it has developed over the years.

If you do read it, it’s always nice to put a review up on Amazon, unless you didn’t like it, in which case just keep your opinion to yourself, please.

Hopefully, there won’t be any more Incredibly Exciting Announcements because Thriller Guy has made it clear that he has grown very tired of that wordplay joke.

Thanks again to all the folks who supported the book and continue to support the series.

Writing Old

Writer pal  Larry Kahaner who blogs at The Non-FictionNovelist, has mentioned while discussing writing techniques that Allen Appel and Dan Stashower are able to write “old.”  Thriller Guy will now turn the blog over to Appel for an explanation.

What Larry is talking about is the ability to write historical fiction where the characters sound, when there is dialogue, like they belong in whatever the historical period the novel is set in. All my time travel books are set in the past, (as opposed to the future): Time After Time is set in 1917, Twice Upon a Time 1876, Till the End of Time 1945, The Sea of Time 1913, and In Time of War 1865. My novel, Abraham Lincoln: Detective takes place in 1842. So how does one go about making his characters “sound” correct? (You can go here and buy any of these novels for Kindle and judge for yourself if I have succeeded.) 

First of all, it’s impossible to do so with absolute certainty because recording devices didn't exist until invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. Even then after that date, I believe, recording devices were so unusual that most people spoke into them in self-conscious ways for many years. Look at an old newsreel with a politician standing on the courthouse steps being filmed, and you’ll usually see a man shouting at the camera in a stilted manner as if the medium itself was hard of hearing. Recordings of casual, relaxed, off-hand conversation just didn’t exist until more modern times. So what’s a writer to do?

Dan Stashower says, “You don’t want to sound like a Renaissance Fair.  ‘Prithee, wouldst thou direct me to the Porta Potty?’  I like to roll around in old newspapers and novels, to pick up the flavors and textures of the period.”

(Thriller Guy would like to bust in here for a moment to mention that Dan’s latest book. Hour of Peril is now out in paperback. It’s an excellent read about Lincoln and Pinkerton as they travel to Washington for Lincoln’s first inaugural. Buy a copy and do yourself a favor. Also, Dan’s series of mysteries starring Harry Houdini as the detective are back in print. You can see how he tackles the writing “old” problem in this series.) 

Allen here again… Whenever I start, or actually before I start a new book set in the past, I search out any letters I can find that are of the period either by famous people or better yet by “ordinary” folks. I understand that people do not necessarily speak like they write, but it gives me a working knowledge of the sorts of words that they used in dialogue. When I have Mark Twain as a character, as I did in Twice Upon a Time, and as I do in the novel I’m completing now, I go back to his collected letters to get a sense of the rhythm of the way he wrote, and, hopefully, spoke. I use, as Dan has suggested, old newspapers to pick up phrases and words that were current at the time. Period novels are less helpful to me in that I don’t trust that fictional characters are speaking the way people really spoke.

But it is wise not to become too caught up in these difficulties and concerns. If you do, you will spend all your time attempting to perfect your “old voice” rather than getting on with the actual novel. And besides, if no one knows what people in the past actually sounded like then readers won’t have any idea if you’ve got it right or not. The trick is to toss in a piece of dialogue that is a bit stilted every once in awhile, stilted in a way that suggests the period. You can’t do this too often or too overtly -- it can backfire and take the reader out of his suspension of disbelief -- but if you’re careful it can establish the reader in the period without being too obvious. Remember, as in most areas of writing and life, a little goes a long way.

So the next time you read a period novel, ask yourself if the author has succeeded in this tricky task. And if you’re a writer as well, pay attention to how the author pulled off this bit of slight of hand. And use it yourself.

The Five Mistakes Thriller Writers Make: Number Three -- So You Think You're Funny?

Maybe you are. But you’re taking a big chance finding out. This entry in this series of blogs will continue in the near future.

But first, a commercial announcement.

TG wants to know who out there understands what a Kickstarter project is? Raise your hands. Hmmmm, TG sees that his audience is skewing old. OK, let TG explain it to you. The Kickstarter website is a place where you can go and put up projects where you ask people, this is called a version of crowd sourcing, for help – money -- in achieving  certain projects. Go to Kickstarter.com to see this in action. It’s actually pretty cool, and many people have been able to produce work that they never could have achieved had they gone through regular channels.

So TG’s alter ego, Allen Appel, has put up a Kickstarter project. He’s the… OK, why not let him talk for himself? You have the blog, Allen Appel.

I’m the author of a time travel series called The Pastmaster, about a NY history professor who has the ability to shift through time. The books can be found in most second hand bookstores and as Kindle books. Over the years, many people have written me letters and sent me emails asking if I ever intended to write the sixth book in the series. While I would have loved to continue the series, the NY-based publishing industry decided that there really wasn’t enough money in it for them to publish any more of these books. So the series died.

Enter the new era of book publishing where the author has the opportunity to not only write his books, but to put them up on the Internet for sale. Wait a minute, TG wants to put in a word here:

 “Kiss my ass, publishing industry.”

 We’ll, those are harsh words, TG, but I, and many other authors, applaud your sentiment. So all of my Pastmaster series are available as Kindle books. And I thank all of you who have been downloading them. But I would like to write the next in the series. I spend all of my available time writing reviews for a major publishing magazine, and interviews, and working with writers who are writing their own thrillers and want help. So to carve out a little space, I am asking for $5,000.00 in donations to show that readers care enough to help in the actual creation of books. If I reach this goal, I’ll write the next book in the Pastmaster series. If you’re a reader, or a writer, and you’d like to show that the old model of book publishing has been superseded by a new model, go to this site and pledge. I thank you, and the brave new world of independent publishing thanks you.

And don't forget to come back soon for TG's continuing series on The Five Mistakes Thriller Writers Make.

Fear Nothing

Thriller guy was having lunch with his pal and fellow writer Larry the other day and we were discussing the way we wrote when we were young. This subject has been much on TG’s mind these days as Allen Appel, TG’s alter ego, recently put all his early works up, plus some recent stuff on Amazon for Kindle as part of his ongoing experiment concerning the world of publishing as it exists, or doesn’t exist, today. Well, let’s drop the convoluted POV and let Appel take up the thread.

Reading novels I’d written two and three decades ago was an interesting experience. In many ways, it was like traveling back in time. I recognized my words as I read, but I had almost no memory of writing them. I laughed at my own jokes, marveled at the interesting facts I had unearthed in my research, and, most importantly, I was amazed at the chances I took. It never occurred to me at the time that what would now seem a series of near impossible plot connections could not be achieved. These were my time travel books, known as the Pastmaster series, where I would plop my hero, Alex Balfour, down amidst some outrageous circumstance and expect him to make his labyrinthine way to a cataclysmic ending which he would somehow survive to fight again another day in the next book. A good example is the third book in the series, Till the End of Time. Alex arrives back in time at Pearl Harbor during the attack and ends up making his way through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Really? Really! I can remember at the time coming up with that plan, just the beginning and the end, and hardly giving a thought to the difficulties that would be involved. And this was before we had the Internet for research. As I reread this book I was amazed that I had followed my original idea and that, at least in my opinion, succeeded in making it believable. Would I attempt such a journey today? All my professional experience gained after nearly forty years in the business would tell me that it would be impossible, and I would be broken on the yoke of such a task. And yet there it is. You can read it for yourself.

 

Here’s the writing lesson in today’s sermon: don’t let being older and wiser keep you from taking the chances a tyro might leap at. You’re smarter now, use that experience to achieve the flights of imagination that novels, or any other writing, demand.

Dream big.

Plot big.

Write big.

Fear nothing.