Bradley Convissar – To Outline or not to Outline

To Outline or not to Outline

by Bradley Convissar

There is no one right way to tell a story.   While some authors require an extensive outline before they start any project and some authors never outline, I think most authors do both depending on what the project is.   There are advantages and disadvantages to each, and for authors like me who do both, it all depends on the story itself.   I took two opposite approaches with my two latest projects: my recently released Blood, Smoke and Ashes, and my work in progress, Bloodlines.

Blood, Smoke and Ashes was inspired when I was watching Auction Hunters.  I decided it would be fun to have a story based around something someone found in a storage unit.  I created several characters, and villain, and let the characters write the story.  I had no idea how it was going to end when I started.  I had no idea who was going to live or die.  Funny thing is, halfway through the story, I had an idea of where it was going.  How it was going to end.  But then I had a pivotal scene on the stairs between mother and daughter.  And I said to myself: Hmmm… what would happen if the daughter did this… It changed the whole course of the story, and once again I had no idea how it was going to end.  But I was happy I made this change because the final product was much better for it.  Without an outline you, as the author, are more likely to let evolving characters and situations dictate the story instead of you forcing the characters to do things for the sake of the finale.

Of course, the downsides to not plotting… it requires A LOT more rewrites.  As Blood, Smoke and Ashes  evolved, I realized that I had to go back and change a lot of earlier details to fit the new narrative.  It was a lot of work.  And of course, if you are writing a mystery or police procedural or something highly structured, it would be much more difficult, if not impossible, to do it without an outline.  But for the horror and thrillers I write, where the end is NOT as important as the trip, I find that an outline can sometimes keep me too focused, to rigid, and not allow me to adapt as circumstances demand.

Now, Bloodlines… Bloodlines was originally intended to be a serial.  And it may still be a serial.  It is four parts: Abomination, Brutalization, Corruption and Damnation (and maybe a fifth, Extinction, if necessary).  Because I intended for this to be a serial, I needed to outline it.  You can’t wander too far with a serialized story because you don’t have the ability to go back and change what was already written.  You are locked into whatever happened in the previous episode and must use that as the basis for what comes next.  So you need to have a firm idea of what is going to happen.

I remember the show LOST.  I loved LOST.  Well, the first 3 seasons.  After that… I felt the writers had no clear direction, no outline, and the story began to border on the ridiculous. The writers couldn’t go back and say, “That was a bad idea, let’s fix it.”  You can only go forward.   And sometimes the end result is not ideal.

The main advantage to outlining a book is obvious: every time you sit down to write, you know exactly where you are going.  There is no guessing.  No writer’s block.  Just fill in the details.  You know where you are, you know where you are going, you know what story you want to tell.  There are very few surprises and little indecision.

The main downside to extensive outlining is, especially if you’ve spent hours upon hours plotting out the book, you may be less likely to veer of your path as you write, even if inspiration hits.  Even if you feel that a particular change would be good for the story or be more logical.  After all, if you’ve invested hours on an outline… if you start changing things, change the decisions characters make or plot elements, then that outline may be garbage.  And that can be scary, to throw away lots of hard work and set your project back weeks or months, even if it will make the story better.  Sometimes the best stories are written when it is open-ended.

As with most things in life, there are no right or wrong answers, just a differing of opinion.  What works for one author doesn’t necessary work for another.  I can’t work without music in the background and I’ve talked to others who can’t work with any noise.  When it comes to writing a story, you need to consider what works for you and what works for that particular story.  Don’t think that there is only one way to do it.

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Genre – Thriller / Horror

Rating – PG13 bordering on R

(Horror with some violence / Some sex, not overly graphic)

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Blog http://bradleyconvissar.blogspot.com/

Marie Maiden – What Inspired Me To Write My Book?

What Inspired Me To Write My Book?

by Marie Maiden

I was compelled to write my book in order to share my story of how I overcome the odds that were stacked against me.  I titled my book “You Cannot Find Peace Until You Find All The Pieces” because there were many things missing from my life as a child growing up and my life as a young adult was negatively impacted by a less than desirable childhood.  I strongly desired to live a happy life so I did the work that was necessary to put the pieces of my broken life back together.

In my book, I share how I overcame many obstacles in my life. Through my story, the reader will be encouraged to overcome the obstacles in their own lives.  My book offers Hope. My book reveals the path to finding authentic living and happiness.  Life comes at you and you have to know how to deal with it.  Learn how to unlock the inner strength in you. This book is a powerful and effective tool to help the reader to discover the answers to what is missing from your life.  Read “You Cannot Find Peace Until You Find All The Pieces” by Marie Maiden.

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Genre - Christian / Historical / Inspirational

Rating – G

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y1 by Sherrie Cronin

Part 1: Fire Dancing for Fun and Profit

Chapter 3. June 2009

Zane Zeitman had spent nine months pretty well establishing to his own satisfaction that being a lab technician sucked. At least it did here at Penthes Pharmaceuticals, a downtown Chicago-based mid-sized corporation known for its philosophy of stiff internal competition and high rewards for the golden few capable of rising above the company's other eight-hundred or so employed peons. What was worse was that Zane had understood the situation perfectly well when he took the job. So as he lurched along, holding on tightly to a pole he shared with four other commuters on the overly full El train, he figured he had only himself to blame.

Zane's slightly slender, five-eleven frame seemed to have become shorter and rounder over the last nine months of work, and his skin was pastier. His non-descript medium ash-brown hair was disarrayed as usual and the khakis he wore, one of three pairs of acceptable work pants that he now owned, had permanent coffee stains from the long hours of trying to stay awake in the lab.

Dr. Peter Hulson Sr., Penthes’ still highly involved seventy-three-year-old founder, was exceedingly proud of being a self-made multimillionaire. He catapulted in the 1970s from the middle class into significant wealth and power on the sole basis of his intellect, drive, and hard work. Or at least that is how Dr. Hulson told the story when interviewed and when addressing his employees. Zane supposed that the real story behind the myth was a bit more complicated, as real stories tended to be, but he was willing to give the old man his due as being brilliant in the field of modern drugs relating to mental health. And he fully acknowledged Dr. Hulson was entitled to shape whatever sort of corporate culture he wished in his own company.

But when one was basically on the low end of the hired help, not deemed qualified to make decisions or contribute in any fashion other than by doing exactly what one was told, Zane was discovering that life in the jungle was pretty miserable. Do well, and the competitive geniuses above you in the hierarchy just want more. They are trying to get theirs. Do poorly and you've caused them to stumble, a sin which will not soon be forgiven.

As a particularly large woman bumped against him when the train screeched to one more stop, Zane shook his head, trying to reconstruct how he had gotten himself into such a miserable position. Graduating a year ago with his shiny bachelor's degree in neuroscience from one of the nation's most prestigious universities, he and his friends had celebrated mightily with drunken relief. And when he got his diploma, his parents had literally cried with pride. Their genius son. Their firstborn.

It turned out that it was nice someone had thought he was so very special, because the job market the summer of 2009 was considerably less impressed. As his friends had scattered off into graduate schools, jobs, volunteer work and under-employment, Zane became increasingly aware that he himself had landed in a field in which a Ph.D. was a minimum requirement for responsibility and advancement. And though the workings of the human mind and how it interfaced with the body absolutely still fascinated him, the prospect of five or six years of, say, pulverizing rat brains in a blender and examining the results, did not enthuse him. He had hoped that a few years break in the working world would help.

But the working world did not have so much to offer. If he wanted to get away from academia, which he did, then he was either going to end up tending to others’ lab experiments in the private sector, or he was going to end up in something like sales or marketing in a field related to pharmaceuticals. Both sounded distasteful. But so did waiting tables.

Worse yet, entry-level jobs for those in his situation at bigger firms with reputations for caring reasonably well for their employees seemed to have gotten filled before he ever got his application in the door. Zane thought it was fairly apparent that it would have been helpful to have had an uncle or old family friend at one of these places, looking out for a suitable spot for him well before graduation. That was just the way of the world.

But after a few discouraging months of job searching, first from his campus apartment and then from back home in Texas when his money ran out, Penthes had interrupted his growing desperation with a request for a phone interview. Zane knew he was not particularly outgoing on the phone, but he had tried his very best with this one as he was frankly running out of options. And something must have impressed these folks enough, because they offered him a position in Chicago. Maybe, he thought in retrospect, they were impressed by his desperation.

There was no moving allowance offered, but yeah, his parents would help him get there. And it wasn't so much a job as it was a sort of poorly paid contract for an eighteen-month probationary period. Nine months as a lab assistant, then the same as an assistant in sales and marketing. This was unusual, but the company said that they wanted him to experience both entry-level avenues, to see what he was best at. Frankly he agreed it would be good for him to try both. Then, the contract specified that they would talk about his future.

Zane figured that the nine months in the lab would be relatively easy, mildly enjoyable, and, if he was lucky, even a bit informative. Instead, it had been hell. Driven young researchers, fighting each other to impress every boss between themselves and Dr. Hulson himself, were more than willing to use and abuse Zane with workdays that went late into the night, and weekends that almost always required his time as well. Appreciation was nil, and he figured out quickly that there was no way for him to get an "A." He was tense most of the time.

Except for Britta, a fellow graduate of his who had also landed a job in Chicago, and her housemates who had taken him in, he had no real friends in town and no time to make any. Life had gone from hard work and fun to just plain hard work. Zane was puzzled by how thoroughly this had happened. He could not believe that his life, actually anyone's life, was meant to be little more than a series of long tedious days drinking bad coffee in windowless rooms, punctuated by sleep, food, a little TV and then more of the same, with the occasional drunken partying on weekends to provide the rare moment of joy. That was just crazy.

As his mandated stint in sales and marketing approached, he realized that he had gone from dreading it, to looking forward to it. He had no illusions about being good in a field which required that he act friendly when he didn't feel like it and that he exaggerate the good points of products he did not necessarily believe in. Zane had never liked lying. But any change right now just had to be a good thing.

To make matters worse, vacation time during this probationary period was ridiculously limited. He had barely managed to get a day off to go back to Texas for a long weekend before he began his new assignment. What he really would have liked was several days in Cancun, but neither the money nor the time was there for that. So Zane figured he could settle for just some of his dad's home cooking and his mom's sympathy. Way better than nothing. And the really good news was that he left for Texas tomorrow.

His mom looked baffled when she met him at the airport, and it took Zane awhile to figure out that it was his physical appearance. Oh right. Damn.

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Genre – Speculative Fiction

Rating – PG13 (occasional crude language & main character is gay)

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Website http://ytothepowerof1.org/

Author Interview – Lee Tidball

Do you plan to publish more books? Most definitely!  I have another one coming out in July that is a middle-grade/YA historical fantasy, the third chapter of my three-part graphic novel series should be out by sometime this fall, and my publisher for MALLED has already requested that I turn a couple more of my screenplays into novels for her company.  So lots going on.

What else do you do to make money, other than write? It is rare today for writers to be full time… What other jobs have you had in your life?  I was fortunate to have a very long and satisfying career as a middle-grades teacher before becoming a writer full-time.  I also coached youth runners, soccer players, and founded and directed a community children’s theater program at various times in the past.  These things gave me a priceless wealth of experience with young people and families that helps me write relatably and realistically for this audience.  It also allowed me to retire a couple years ago with a pension adequate enough to pay the bills, etc. and pursue writing on a full time basis rather than just on weekends, over holiday breaks, and in the summer.  My writing career, both in novels and screenwriting, has really taken off since then.

If you could study any subject at university what would you pick?  Most any kind of history, but probably ancient history in particular.  I used to teach that to my 6^th graders and it was a blast!

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?  Somewhere that it’s not cold, but not too hot either, especially not humid, and where I can get along speaking English.  That could be a myriad of places, but any of them could be home as long as my partner Cyndie was with me.

Tell us about your family?  I live with my partner Cyndie, who has been a real godsend to me as a writer because she genuinely admires my work and never stops encouraging me in it.  And since she’s a teacher (2^nd grade), she always plugs my age-appropriate stuff with her students J.  Her oldest son just graduated from college and will enter the working world as a mechanical engineer.  Of her other two teenage kids, one will be off to college this fall to the University of California, Merced and the other will be a sophomore in high school.  I have two grown sons who live near their mom in the St. Louis area.  I have brothers and sisters that live back in the Midwest, and nieces and nephews that live in various places around the country.

How do you write – lap top, pen, paper, in bed, at a desk? I write with a laptop (definitely prefer Macbooks), usually at a desk.  But I also have hung out in bookstores and coffeeshops a lot with my Macbook and a portable lap desk working as well.  I’d be hopeless without some kind of way to actually type my work (as opposed to pen and paper)—my handwriting is almost completely illegible, even to me.

Amazon bestseller - Teen/YA Literature and Fiction

“Imagine the unimaginable.”

That was the mantra of young prodigy Hector Chevas’s mentor in architectural design, Gellini. But even Gellini couldn’t imagine the horrors that his prize student and adopted son would fill Suburbia’s new Heartland Mall with to wreak revenge on those who killed Gellini and murdered Hector’s only friends. “Black Friday” was never blacker.

But Hector couldn’t imagine that, in the middle of his deathly rampage, an “angel” from his past would re-appear into his life; wild-child Janey, whose life he’d saved years before, and who’d never forgotten her promise to “always love him…for reals.” But was that love strong enough now to learn the unimaginable truth; to call Hector’s “dead” soul back to life and resurrect him from his mad plunge into oblivion?

MALLED is a story filled with tragedy, terror, raw emotion, unspeakable horrors, and, above all, the awesome power of ferocious, undying love. Go for it. Get into it. Dare to “imagine the unimaginable.”

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Genre –  NeoGothic Horror / Thriller

Rating – R for violence & language

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Time and Space by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

Chapter 1
THE SNATCH

FORTY. Tomorrow, I will be forty. That number echoes in my footsteps as I walk the familiar beat to work.

Time.

That’s my name, and … where did the time go? When did I get to forty? What does it mean?

Beat, beat, beat: my footsteps rap along the sidewalk in time to the music pumping into my ears from my iPod touch. My footsteps distract me. But only for a moment. I think: at my age, my mother still had not had me. That’s why my mother and father had called me “Time.”

“It was about time your mother got pregnant,” my father would say often during post-Sunday-dinner coffee, as he leaned back in his worn armchair lighting his pipe.

“And it was about time you got out. You sat in there and sat in there and would not come out,” my mother would retort to me.

“So we called you ‘Time’,” Father would say. Then he would end the story with: “Seemed logical.”

“Seemed appropriate,” Mother would counter as Father finally managed to pull a draw from his pipe and emit three puffs.

What a horrid name, I think, as I turn the corner onto Queen. Today, it’s made me obsessed with time and with turning forty. I see a people-stuffed streetcar trundle by, and I sigh. It’s been awhile since I gave up trying to catch the streetcar to work and reluctantly woke up earlier to get there on foot.

Peggy and Sue have this big birthday lunch planned for me tomorrow at our favourite restaurant. And the boss has generously—I roll my eyes at “generously”—given me two hours off so we can take our time. The whole thing is surreal.

Bzzzttt.

I take my iPod touch out of my skirt pocket and look at it. The screen is dark, and I press the Home button. No notifications. I turn it this way and that to find what created that strange noise. It seems okay. I shrug, slip it back into my pocket, and continue walking along my route.

The morning sun is slanting sharply along the sidewalk in front of me, toward me, pointing at me, that old woman turning forty. I want to hide from its edgy light, but no point in crossing the street into the shadowed sidewalk. I’ll only have to cross back again. I hate walking.

Voices interrupt my thoughts, and I glance into a garishly-painted alley and think: Ford Nation has obviously missed this place. But perhaps there’s so much graffiti in Queen West alleys, it’s worn out Mayor Ford and his fans before they could erase it all. But there’s no one loitering or walking in the alley, only solitary people like me hustling along Queen Street, coffee cups in hand. Suddenly, I stop. I look at my empty hand: I forgot to get my morning café latté, no whip, soya milk, half-sweet, grandé. I think of retracing my steps, but then I’ll be late, and the boss doesn’t like tardiness. He gets in a snit if I’m even one minute late. My feet resume walking.

And my thoughts resume churning.

At my age, my parents had been married twenty years. It would be another five before I was born. They’d both died a decade ago. I have no sisters or brothers. And since both my parents were only children, I had no immediate cousins. As a child, I met these strange adults my parents called “distant cousins” on special occasions like weddings, adults who embraced me in powder and perfume, exclaimed over how much I’d grown, making me squirm. But I haven’t seen them since the funeral.

The last funeral.

I’ve been alone in the world for ten years, yet until today I hadn’t dwelled on it, hadn’t felt alone. I live in the house my parents lived in. I’ve been working at the same kind of job since I graduated from university with my English Lit degree and went right into a temping agency. Father tried to get me to think bigger, but what was I good for? I’m bad at math. Numbers confuse me. And science is gibberish. Only eggheads do science anyway. But then who’d want an English grad? I thrust away a stray memory of an interview with … I can’t even remember now. Father had said I’d sabotaged it; Mother had said never mind, I was born to type. And so type I did and have until this day. I thought it’d be temporary until I found my feet. Yet there they are, my feet, attached to the bottom of my legs, and they’re taking me to my admin assistant job as they do every weekday.

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Genre – Science Fiction / Time Travel

Rating – PG13

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Website http://jeejeebhoy.ca/

John’s Gospel: The Way It Happened by Lee Harmon

cHAPTER 1

The Preexis T en T Chris T

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. —Revelation 21:6

Ruth reappeared from the door of the house with a writing board and quill. She produced an empty scroll from under her arm, sat down upon a wooden stool near John, and with a defiant glance toward Matthew, said one word: “Ready.”

“Thank you, Ruth! But first, Matthew, tell me what brings you back to Ephesus?”

“No, you go first, John. Why are you here at the home of Ruth’s mother? I hardly expected to find you here. You’re in no condition to travel.”

“Should I not visit my flock, so long as I live? And also, I’d heard you were arriving.”

“Me? You came to see me?”

John shrugged. “I came to see the son of Samuel.”

“Well, you may see my father as well, then.” Matthew pointed to a limestone ossuary near the gate, making no attempt to hide the scowl on his face. “I bring his bones home to where he lived, where he last found happiness. He’ll be buried here in Ephesus.”

“Your father died?” John rolled onto a shoulder to stare across the courtyard at the modest, undecorated box. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” “I’m not surprised. You keep yourself quite separated here, John.” John made a face. “These are my people. My sheep.” He waved a hand at the expanse of Asia Minor.

“Yes. Well.” Matthew still scowled, wondering if this were a good time to make his exit. But where would he go? To John, he replied as politely as he could manage, “I know how close you were to my father, but his spirit left months ago.”

“It’s good that he died in Judea. To be buried in Jerusalem is like being buried under the altar, right? Why did you move his bones from there?”

Matthew’s scowl turned into a sneer. “Oh, we didn’t last long in Jerusalem. It remains a sorry excuse for God’s city, still in shambles from the war. You may remember, John—we left Ephesus heading for Jerusalem just shortly after your vision, because my father could no longer support us with his bricklaying business. He broke ties with the trade guild, you know, at the temple of Artemis.”

“Yes, I know,” John said simply.

Matthew’s eyes flashed bitterness before he continued. “They called us heathen here, John! Heathen! Because my father believed in Christ rather than their deified caesars! Christians are hated here in Ephesus.” Because you taught us to deny the gods and customs of this land, Matthew avoided saying aloud. “My father could no longer find work, except among your Christians, who could not support us. So we left.”

“Samuel always wanted to return to Jerusalem.”

“Yes, he did. He spoke of it often to me. ‘God’s city,’ he called it. ‘The Holy City’! ‘The bride of Christ’! A miserable joke. We did not stay there long but returned to Syria and settled in Antioch.”

Ruth spoke now, her voice taking on a milder tone. Matthew’s apparent pain had chased the tease away. “You know, John, they have additional gospels in Syria now. Two more works of God, two more anonymous gifts—tributes to the life of our Christ.”1

“Yes, I am aware,” John nodded, glancing at Matthew. He clearly knew Matthew to be the origin of one of the two, though he gave no indication of approval or disapproval. Steering the conversation back on track, he asked Matthew, “How are the Christians in Antioch?” “They struggle, like here. Christians are no longer welcome in the

synagogues. I went to a service with my father a few days before he died. He wished to experience one last Sabbath, sharing the rituals of our God in the synagogue, so we endured the stares and joined the congregation. The president noted our arrival and asked me to lead us in the Amidah, the common prayer.”

“And you did?”

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Genre – Religion / Christianity

Rating – G

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Website http://www.dubiousdisciple.com/

Blurred Lines by Breena Wilde

Hooking has four important rules.

1.  Cash only.
2.  Use protection.
3.  Carry mace.
4.  Don’t fall in love.

Twenty-year-old Cadence is a prostitute and she lives by the rules. They keep her alive, and they keep her heart protected. But when she agrees to take one last job to get out from under her pimp, she discovers some of the rules might be worth breaking.

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Genre - Erotic New Adult

Rating – NC-17

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Website http://www.breenawilde.blogspot.com

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