About Books

So I did something kind of cool Saturday — I got to hear Nicholas Sparks speak. Sparks is the mega-popular author of books like The Notebook and Message in a Bottle (both of which have been made into movies).

One of my local libraries has an endowment to bring authors/speakers to the area, and he was their big draw this year. An interesting note: the library paid him $25,000 to come in, go to a luncheon, and do a talk at one of the local arts venues — all of which added up to about 4 or 5 hours’ worth of his time. Nice work if you can get it. 😎

Sparks was very personable and told a lot of funny stories about his kids and his dog. He also gave some insight as to how he came up with the idea for The Notebook and his other books. Many were family stories or tragedies.

For example, his wife’s grandparents and their love story was the inspiration for The Notebook. His dad finally learning to love again after his mom’s death and his dad then dying in a car accident was the inspiration for Message in a Bottle.

Overall, Sparks was a good speaker with a lot of interesting antecedotes. Next year, I hope the library brings in someone just as well-known and entertaining. I’d love to hear John Grisham speak or Lisa Kleypas or a dozen other authors …

Well, the good news about the blog being down so long is that quite a bit of stuff has been happening with the Elemental Assassin series, which means I have some news to share.

The biggest is this — the books are now going to be published in mass market format. Huzzah! 😎

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this move to mass market. Given the craptastic economy, the cheaper format will mean that the books are much more affordable for folks — $6.99 or $7.99 versus $14 or $15 for a trade paperback.

The release schedule is still the same — Assassin 1 in February, Assassin 2 in June, and Assassin 3 in October. Since the books are going to be released in the mass market format, they will actually hit shelves a week early, which means that Spider’s Bite, the first book in the Elemental Assassin series, will now be out on Jan. 26, 2010. Not that I’m counting down the days or anything … 😉

Also, in the last month, I’ve done copy edits for Spider’s Bite, revisions on Assassin 2 (title still to be determined), and I’m getting revisions on Assassin 3 from my editor this week. So stuff is finally starting to happen on the production end of things.

Oh yeah, and I’ve started writing Assassin 4 too, just in case my publisher wants more books in the series (which I hope they do).

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on with me and my books. What have you guys been up to while we’ve been on forced hiatus? Share in the comments.

Is over at Magical Musings. Enjoy!

On Saturday, I got the chance to hear novelist Stephen Hunter talk at the Bristol Public Library. Hunter writes action-adventure/thriller types books about a sniper named Bob Lee Swagger, among other colorful characters.

I always like to go and hear authors talk just because everybody has different inspirations and different processes. It’s always good to listen to a different point of view. And Hunter was very funny, which always helps. I loved the way he described one of his books — as being full of meetings and gun fights. Who doesn’t love a good gun fight? 😉

One of the most interesting things Hunter talked about were the skills that a writer needs. He talked about how writers need to be able to work with words, to avoid cliches, and to know what words will make a sentence sing — without putting too many words in it and having it fall flat. He also talked about how writers need to be able to see the big picture — how every scene falls in with the overall flow and the story arc(s) of the book.

These are things that I’m thinking about more and more these days. Is a scene necessary? Does it advance the story the way that I want it to? Is crucial information revealed? Does it pack an emotional punch?

I don’t necessarily think that every sentence in a book needs to be a great one. Because, let’s face it, that’s just not going to happen. If you want realistic dialogue, you’re going to have to write some ordinary sentences because that’s just how people talk – “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call her right now.” Not the most interesting sentence, but it is what someone might say in a given situation — and it does advance the action.

But I do think that every overall scene needs to be important and advance the story. It’s kind of like juggling, I suppose. You start out with all these balls in the air, then, one by one, you decide which ones to keep in your act and which ones to throw away.

Anyway, those are my deep thoughts for Monday. Enjoy the rest of your day!