New Novel Progress: Getting out of trouble.

I'm almost to the point in the new novel where the story changes from a telling to a denouement. That's a damn fine place to be after all the effort. Chap 18 and 19 are going to have to be merged and split at some point, which will re-structure things to twenty two chapters at least. For now, Chap 20 (as outlined) is where I need to get to declare Manuscript Complete. A first pass at Editing has gone well, too, having gotten several pages into Chap 19 already. If we time this right, I and my Editor will be both focused on the structural changes and then going at "known" rewrites in about a week. Which means it is time to wave this flag:

Some of you will be asked to be "beta", or pre-publication, readers. IF you are, one of the key things you will be asked to do is to read the manuscript quickly. That doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't, do a careful read... but I think it would help most to get some quick "this needs to be fixed" feedback before anything more detailed. Big fixes take time, and there is still the hope to make the book fit for publication before the end of April.

With that out of the way, here's some more information about the story in the new novel.

The deep team, our main character and his three colleagues, enter Guinea-Bissau as two pairs. I've already teased a bit of the arrival story for Alan and Matty. Here's an excerpt from when Anna and Charlie get in-country:

Holmgren and Duarte had the first part of the afternoon to themselves. They were scheduled for a “welcome meeting” with some of the higher-ups in the Ministry of Health and Education at 1630hrs, but that gave them time for lunch and a couple of hours to get to know what was within walking distance of their hotel. The lunch special at the hotel restaurant was a fancy fish dish presented as if it was French haute cuisine, which Charlie dubbed Maquereau hors de prix. Anna was still smiling about the waiter’s reaction to overhearing that phrase when they paid up and set out for a stroll. She had a linen parasol helpfully offered by the hotel, but even with that, there was no making haste in the mid-day heat. None the less, if there was a pleasant part of Bissau City to take a walk around, this was it.

 Colonial-era government buildings were arrayed nearby, casting short shadows onto the surrounding grounds. The French had a Cultural Center in addition to a prime location for their Embassy. There were several other embassies in the neighborhood as well. The Soviets had only a ceremonial presence, but the Cubans had a substantial building constructed from a significant portion of all the concrete in the country and none of the architectural grace. The Americans were nowhere in sight, having settled for a place out in Penha District to the West as they were latecomers here. The British had a flea speck of a presence at the edge of this neighborhood, close to the old estate that the Portuguese had begged permission to buy as an embassy after they gave up this colony.

The time spent walking gave them some time to talk, although what they spoke of were things appropriate to the identities they were in. A few details became apparent, like the complete impracticality of depending on the network of local buses and the manifest population imbalance between men and women. The first was explained by a lack of imported parts to properly maintain the buses. The second was a reminder of when the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde, the local Communists more commonly known as PAIGC, took over the country. They were pretty quick to round up and slaughter anyone who had been a loyal soldier to the Portuguese. Filling mass graves with ten thousand bodies of military age men, when the entire country had a population of under than a million people, meant the gender ratio was even more off-parity than was common in West Africa.

Nice neighborhood, isn't it? Hope you enjoyed this sample and I'll be posting here again soon!

A Writer's Device: Embellishment!

It's been a lovely month of travel, writing, relaxing and sorting out other things in my life. It was a much-needed change of pace, but it's time to be seen here again. Hope you've all been well in the interim!

There is always a bit of a choice when you are asked to tell a story about an experience... besides simply making a fiction of it, which some people seem to love to do (( shrug ))... but in this case I mean "Tell it dryly and expect the story to entertain all by itself" or "tell it with some style and panache; dress things up to convey thoughts and mood". The latter of those options is the right way to Embellish a telling. Add nothing untrue, but have fun with conveying the tale.

Here's an example from my travels last month: The Tomato Juice Telling.

I was seated center on the flight from Japan to Seattle... crammed into a crowded row as usual in Economy, but with no aisle to lean into for space. About an hour after take-off was the drink service, and the following happened.

Dry Telling:

"When the Flight Attendant tried to put my drink on my tray table, I had my arms under the table to get a mobile device out of the seat back. The drink slid off the table and into my lap, spilling all of it. Had to protect the people sitting next to me from the spill, and one of them got relocated to another seat during the clean-up. My clothes had to be washed in the sink and left to dry in the back cabin for the flight. I got given the seat next to mine, and a couple of blankets to cover up for the flight time."

yeah, that happened. But it is a bit of the "what a bother" told that way. The following is a lot more fun to hear:

Told With Style:

"When the Flight Attendant tried to put my drink on my tray table, I had my arms under the table to get a mobile device out of the seat back. The drink slid off the table and into my lap, spilling all of it. She'd already looked away, so might not have seen it happening. Or as it was a Delta international flight, with their seniority system, and she being a late-career Jaded As Fuck Flight Attendant, maybe she didn't care...

"Drink went straight into my lap. Belt to ankles, Tomato Juice. I couldn't move as I was center seat and had to keep the splash off the people next to me. I asked rather loudly of the Attendant as to what just happened and what to do about it. Got big cow eyes and no words in reply. Fortunately, there was a second Attendant in the other aisle close enough to ask for assistance. I got a response from her, at least. "You'll need to clean yourself up." Oh boy, they recruit the top of the Attendant class for these flights, it seems.

"About this time I saw that the spill was about to leak onto the seat with the nice Vietnamese girl sitting beside me. I warned her that some of the spill might be about to get on her sweat pants... and was greeted with the Wide Eyed Panic of someone facing terror for the first time. Maybe she had a tomato phobia? Anyway, she bolted from her seat, fled to the back cabin, howling plaintively about how she HAD TO BE reseated. At least it freed up that seat and I might be able to stand up now.

"When I got to the aisle, Responsive Grandmother Attendant finally realized how big the mess was and started to try to do something useful. Like clean up the seat and floor. I, realizing I was Priority Nil on her list, got her attention long enough to ask that the Purser meet me up at the Lavatories to help with clean-up and recovery there. Amazingly, she agreed to call the Purser.

"So by the time I've had the pleasure of emptying my trouser pockets carefully and ineffectually rinsing most all of my clothes in the tiny sink, there was a knock at the door of the Lav... Where I was greeted with a fine figure of manhood, 6'3" and strongly built, the embodiment in appearance of Biff Manley, Man of Action, but with the voice of a schoolgirl. The Purser. "Oh. That's... quite the mess."

"My hero leapt into action, offering to take all the rinsed clothes to the bigger sink in the Aircraft Kitchen, wash them out and hang them in the Back Cabin to dry during the remaining 6 hours or so of the flight. He told me to wait, too. After only a few minutes, he was back with 2 fresh blankets for me to use to wear. I carefully considered options, and went with the fashionable choice... tied one on as a Flight Sarong, and draped the other over me when I got back to my now-mine aisle seat.

"In case anyone ever offers you a Flight Sarong as a wardrobe option, I do recommend them. A bit breezy, and can be racy if you don't manage the slit side properly, but very comfortable. They may well be the Next Big Thing in Travel Wear.

"The rest of the flight was uneventful, up to about 40 minutes before arrival... when Purser Manley came by to drop off my clothes, dried... and folded neatly. I was somewhere between boggled and amused and went to get dressed again. If there was a way to tip Flight Attendants, that man sure earned one.

"and I, now guaranteed to be free of any skunk aroma, was dressed and ready for landing. Sadly, they didn't let me keep the blankets for the Flight Sarong, so I can no longer dress like the Malay Villains in a Bollywood action movie. Oh well... I got to Seattle, at least."


Heh, hope you enjoyed the Embellishment. Will post soon about New Novel Progress and other things!

Going AFJ for a bit...

No, not a typo. Away From... Japan. Traveling abroad for the next 11 days.

Will post here when it seems right to do so during the jaunt.

I'll be back in February.

Oh, and since you are all waiting for the new novel: I made great progress the last week or so, but will not be working on it while on travel. So... maybe one and half more chapters to go to wrap up the rough draft, when I return.

See you soon!

Keys to Kindle Sales, revisited: Free Day

As posted recently here, and all over the Social Media outlets I maintain to promote Remember When, I scheduled a One Day FREE promotion on the 16th of January this year.

Remember When was four months past publication, and had hit the long tail of low or no sales which commonly happens to a lesser-known author's works.


The idea of the promotion was to do three things:

To get more copies out to people far removed from the author, to generate more Reviews and spread word-of-mouth.

To get some hype going in the sub-genres that matter for both Remember When and the new novel. The particular target was the Espionage sub-genre for e-books on Amazon Kindle.

and, in a gamble...

To see if a high FREE sales rank translated into more exposure and more organic sales after the promotion ended. To "re-start the long tail", if not actually break through.


How'd we do on those?

Good volume for a new author. There will be some benefits, especially if it becomes more reviewed in places like Goodreads.

Yeah, looks like we did good on this. Here are the Peak (best) Rankings, which we hit after hour 22!
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,088 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Espionage
#33 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 90 minutes (44-64 pages) > Literature & Fiction
#45 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thriller

It's possible we got into the Top Ten for Espionage sub-genre briefly at hour 24, but then the promotion ended. To show you what being in the Top 48 or so gets you... it's Page One of the promotion:

The overall Rank looked like this, to put it in perspective:

 

 

Now, does that give us the gamble? Will people now see and seek out Remember When? Well... We'll find out about that tomorrow or the next day. THANK YOU, EVERYONE for helping make this happen!







Upcoming Promotion for Remember When on Amazon.

I'm busy writing on the new novel (Yay, Chap 19 start!), but I wanted to explain a moment about an upcoming promotion on Amazon for Remember When:

January 16th, 2019, for 24 hours midnight to midnight (PDT), Remember When will be FREE.

So what? All of you who already have it are the people reading this 'blog.

Amazon Kindle allows you to gift copies of an e-book within your geographic (copyright) region. This opportunity lets you do so for free. Seriously, you can just "hand someone a copy" and it costs you nothing but the time to click. It costs them nothing, too. They can choose to accept it or not.

I'll use this opportunity to pass along copies to friends who I know don't usually touch the Thrillers genre, but who delight in reading as a pastime.

It's a way to encourage more reviews, too. Remember When could use more and more recent ones.

And...

L. Douglas Garrett as an author.
Remember When as an e-book.

are both listed on Goodreads now! Some of you are ahead of the game there, but now it's a complete package. You can Review, Rate, and most importantly List Remember When there!

Hope this is a fun thing for you all. It really helps me when you speak up about Remember When!

Thank you, All!

New Novel Progress: Highly professional editing team, hard at work!

Writing proceeds apace... I'm deep in Chapter 18, and into the part where things go to hell.

Editing has advanced, with the first pass done up to the end of Chapter 16.

This screenshot captures the highly professional editing team in action:

Alcohol was not involved. We really do have this much fun working.

Characters in Remember When: A Bonus Short Story.

Written as a special thank you to friends who support the Remember When Book page on Facebook, here is a brief look at one of the characters' back story. Enjoy!

Somebody got punched.

Somebody got punched for saying “Dago” in response to “Kike”, down at the other end of the bar. Barry just pushed his stool back far enough that if a beer bottle or body came sailing his way, at least he’d see it coming. The Jewish kid should have swung first instead of mouthing off. “Holy Hell, assholes”, he thought loudly. “Knock it off. It’s not like this is the neighborhoods.” Okay, maybe he didn’t just think it. Most everyone in the joint was looking at him, even the two morons who’d been throwing punches.

The bartender leaned over to Barry. “Thanks”, he said and looked down toward the troublemakers. “You done now?” Yeah, they were done. Backing away from each other and not even talking. The bartender didn’t say anything more to Barry, but a minute or so later he put another drink in front of him. Barry smiled a little about that. Always nice to be appreciated.

It was his last night in town this month. Nothing wrong with getting on an airplane tired, but he’d try to avoid adding hungover to that. National to Miami, then down to Caracas. Again. There never seemed to be enough time back here. He missed a lot of things happening. He wasn’t even here when she got sick. By the time he got back and someone told him, she was gone. Which was why he was in the bar that night, drinking alone, on their anniversary. His voice was very soft when he said, “Miss you, Cecile…” and finished his fresh drink. He thought it was time to go home, then. When a man had nothing left in his life but his career, it was better not to drink too much.