5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR NINA WRIGHT

Nina Wright is author of the humorous Whiskey Mattimoe mystery series, featuring Abra the Afghan hound, the bad girl of dog fiction. Book #6, Whiskey and Soda, is due out in late May 2012 in both trade paperback and ebook formats. In addition, Nina has published two urban fantasies, Homefree and Sensitive. She is also a playwright, director and actor.  In her spare time she rescues stray dogs and converts them into drug sniffing police K-9's.  Okay, just kidding about the last one, but she keeps a busy schedule, so I was grateful for her time. 

1- What do you feel is the main difference between writing a play and writing a novel?

Thanks for asking this perceptive question. Writing for the stage requires, first, an education in how theatre technically works (the jargon and the mechanics of it), and second, a vision of what will beboth possible and emotionally powerful in a theatrical experience. The essence of good theatre is that it reaches the minds and hearts of its audience through their willing, collective participation inan active illusion. That is to say, theatregoers know that they are watching a simulation of life happening a short distance from their seats, but if the piece works, it draws them into another world and moves them to the perspective-altering response the playwright intended. Strangers gathered in a darkened room simultaneously witness and respond to moments of “live” human crisis. In this anonymous group setting, audience members may be more likely to squirm or sigh or weep or guffaw than they would be while reading a novel. To that end, theatre, when it works, is both more engaging and more objectifying than any other art form I know. It’s also massively collaborative in that the playwright conceives the vision and crafts the story, but a team of talented individuals—including producers, directors, designers, technicians, and of course actors—must ultimately put their fingerprints all over it in before the play comes fully to life.

Writing a novel requires skills in thematic and plot development, characterization, pacing and dialogue similar to those demanded of playwrights. A novelist, however, has greater flexibility in choosing point of view and setting, as well as the number of characters and scenes. Whereas a playwright is necessarily limited in the size of her cast and the cost of her sets, costumes, props, etc., a novelist has no such restrictions. Conversely, it is the sole responsibility and burden of the novelist to build every fiber of her world and the characters who inhabit it. She must be a master at revealing motivation, not to mention molding language, tone, action, and sensory images in such a way that her story comes to life for individual readers. The world of the novel must exist so vividly in the reader’s head that she does not want to put the book down.

2- Tell us about your writing process. Do you have a fairly structured outline, or do you fly by the seat of your pants?

Usually I start with a situation that has captured my fancy: a specific person has a sticky problem or question. Then I wonder and wander all over a hypothetical landscape, repeatedly asking myself “why?”, “how?”, and “what if . . . ?” Always I imagine the character encountering unexpected and increasingly troubling complications, including people who are not what they seem to be. By the time I actually sit down to write the novel or play, I have a strong sense of my major players, my setting, my rising action, my climax, and my resolution. The rest I find once I dive in and begin crafting scenes. The best part of working this way for me is that the thrill of discovery becomes part of every day’s labor.

3- What was it like the first time you saw an actual performance of actors reading your dialogue onstage?

To be bluntly honest, I was bathed in sweat! Perhaps that was partly because I had been a professional actor before I became a playwright, so I was vicariously experiencing the on-stage process at the same time I was judging my own work. Fortunately, that reaction never recurred. I learned another valuable lesson very early on: trust other professionals to care for your work. Backstage at Chicago Dramatists Theatre, I was introduced to the cast of my play only moments before curtain. I was silently horrified at the casting choices the director had made; each actor seemed physically wrong for the roles I had written. I did my best to mask my concerns, but my stomach was in knots until the lights went up, and I realized that the director had chosen the right professionals for each role.

4- Your reviews have been remarkable--How do you keep your protagonist, Whiskey Mattimoe, fresh throughout you entire series?

Keeping a protagonist fresh is one of the biggest challenges for any writer of series fiction. I was never more mindful of that than when I wrote my latest Whiskey Mattimoe mystery, Whiskey and Soda, due out in late May 2012. When we last saw Whiskey in the fifth book of the series, Whiskey with a Twist, she was worried that she might be pregnant by her ex-husband. The answer to that question, unveiled in the new book, will doubtless change the course of her misadventures.

From the start, I’ve taken the position that Whiskey Mattimoe, though a fully formed adult, is capable of yearning and learning, which means that her life can and must change as time passes. Like the rest of us, she has experiences that cause her to question her previous assumptions and consider new choices.

I respect that my readers have specific expectations of Whiskey based on her distinct foibles. For example, Whiskey doesn’t seem to realize that she’s as impulsive and libidinous as her naughty dog, Abra the Afghan hound. She’s the least intuitive person in town, which means that her friends are often frustrated as they try to guide her. In series fiction, as in real life, characters must encounter situations that neither they, their readers, nor even their author saw coming. Having a dog who’s prone to run away and wreak havoc helps keep Whiskey’s responses lively. 

 5- How has the publishing industry changed for you over the past decade, and where do you see it headed for the next ten years?

Although my first novel was published less than seven years ago, I’m astonished by the changes I’ve already seen in the publishing industry, most of which, of course, have been driven by costs and technology. As recently as the early 2000s, I mailed queries and copies of my manuscripts so often that the staff at the local post office knew me well. Now I use email and social networks for virtually all professional communication.

I’m a huge fan of hardbound books, and I believe they will not become extinct, although their number will grow smaller and more elite. The future of mass market paperbacks looks bleak, and I expect fewer trade paperbacks, although POD will continueto enliven that branch of publishing, producing increasingly customized books in order to appeal to print readers.

 I’m very excited by the explosion of digital publishing, which speeds up and democratizes the process. It also muddies the marketing waters in that so many writers are pushing so many books at the same time. The challenge to stand out as a writer worth reading is more daunting than ever. Yet, sales success is no longer limited to those relatively few writers signed by a few big publishers. Bloggers and readers who post online can now dramatically influence a writer’s success.

 Thanks so much, Gary, for this opportunity to talk about my writing. All best to you in your impressive career!

 

IS AMAZON HELPING DISSOLVE WRITER PROFILING?

The prominent bookseller on the planet, Amazon, has become the target of many publishers trying to break up the company's stranglehold on the e-book market.  It seems the court's ruling this week has done nothing to diminish Amazon's ability to bring reasonable pricing to their customers, and readers everywhere should rejoice.  Instead of increasing their prices, Amazon has actually been trying to reduce those prices.  On any given day the bookseller has hundreds, even thousands of books available for free.  Free.  You can't make it up on volume when you give it away.

Yes, one of the ways Amazon has attracted so many readers is by offering low prices, but there's another reason why they have maintained their dominance in the market--Diversity.  Amazon is completely agnostic when they recommend a book to their readers.  They don't distinguish between an indie writer and a traditionally published writer.  To them, it's simply a matter of offering the best possible chance for the reader to enjoy their next read.  You can't do that on Barnes and Noble's site.  If you don't have a deal with the big 6 publishers, the chance of an indie author getting their book read on B&N are reduced dramatically.  I can bore you with statistics, but I've interviewed enough writers to know this is a real occurrence.

So how does this effect the industry?  Simple.  The lines between indie authors and traditionally published authors are fading and Amazon is the reason.  There was a time when all indie writers were self-published because they had no choice.  They couldn't get an agent or a publisher, so they were relegated to the indie route.  Now, that has changed.  There are so many writers choosing to go indie instead of using a publisher that readers can't tell the difference anymore.  And since readers can't tell, Amazon gives them the choice to decide which book they might like best.  Isn't that capitalism at it's finest?

Why doesn't Barnes and Noble do this?  Boy, I wish I knew.  I could throw all kinds of conspiracy theories out there, but the honest answer is--who knows?  If they're not in bed with the Big 6 publishers, they're certainly in the bathroom slipping on a negligee.  I'd like to have more options to offer my readers, but the reality is, Amazon takes good care of their writers, no matter their denomination.  And more importantly, they take care of their readers.  And that's good, because I'm one of their best customers.  I'm a reader.

5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR ROBERT CAPKO

Award-winning author, Robert Capko, writes Action-Adventure Thrillers, including the popular John Paxton series.  He is a veteran of the Unites States Air Force and currently lives in Florida, where he is a high school English teacher by day, but a terrific novelist by night.  He has four wonderful sons and two beautiful grandsons and still found time to play five questions with me.  Thanks, Robert.

1-      Tell us about your Air Force career and what led you into writing fiction?

Well I certainly didn’t do anything as exciting or heroic as my protagonist John Paxton when I served in the Air Force.  I served in the time period leading up to Desert Storm.   It was then that I first learned of the Air Force Pararescue Jumpers (PJs) and their mission to rescue downed pilots behind enemy lines.  I was fascinated by their ability to both fight and save lives.  I knew immediately that I wanted to write novels about them.  From there I spent years learning as much as I could about PJs and what they do.  I have been privileged to meet many of them and to tour their training facilities.  They are truly unsung heroes.

2- Would you be able to write "Say Goodbye," without your experiences in the Air Force?

I would have been able to write it, but I doubt it would have had the realism that I was after.  My service helped me to understand and appreciate the way members of the military interact with one another and the atmosphere in which they operate.  Keeping in mind I write fiction, not training manuals, I strive to capture the essence of military life. 

I knew from experience that everything does not work flawlessly and the mission and leadership are sometimes less than logical.  I strive for an accurate portrayal military life; while at that same time take license to stray from strict accuracy if it serves the plot.

3- Tell us about USAF Pararescue units and why John Paxton is different from your typical protagonist?

The United States Pararescue Jumpers (PJs) are the Special Forces operators that go pretty much anywhere in the world to rescue people.  Their primary mission is to rescue downed airmen behind enemy lines, but they do much more than that.  They are also on standby for all the manned space missions ready to rescue the astronauts should something go wrong.  They are also involved in civilian rescues both on land and at sea in the most extreme circumstances.  I find it intriguing that they combine skills as both warriors and first responder medical professionals.

4- You obviously have a knack for writing tense thrillers.  Where did you develop your writing style?

Thank you.  I learned the style from the masters.  I read tons of action/adventure novels when I was growing up.  I loved reading them so much that I wanted to start writing my own.  So I would take them apart.  If I would read some passage that was particularly exciting, I would stop and ask myself, “how did the author do that?”  I still do that to this day (it takes me forever to read a book!).

5- How do you see digital technology changing the publishing landscape of the next 5 years?

Technology will continue to give authors, and, more importantly, readers, more choices.  It brings the authors and their readers closer together, and the economics of it will foster experimentation.  While I still love a printed book, I am excited about the opportunities that digital technology is creating.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? A TOUCH OF GREED BECOMES REALITY.

After spending ten years publishing short stories and receiving publishing credit and garnering two Pushcart Prize nominations, I decided it was time to attempt a novel.  That book was my first Nick Bracco thriller, "A Touch of Deceit."  In the original manuscript Nick Bracco couldn't tell a lie, similar to the James Spader character in Sex, Lies and Videotape.  But an FBI agent who couldn't lie became cumbersome and required significant reminders to the reader, so I scrapped the idea and moved forward.  That project took almost a decade to perfect--constant changes and rewrites until I was completely satisfied with the end result.

Fast-Forward a few years--after "A Touch of Deceit," loitered in the offices of a high profile Literary Agent's office in New York for 18 months until his assistant was kind enough to contact me after she'd left and tell me the agent had only submitted it to one publisher and had no intention to do anything more with it.  Then another agent, Robert Brown, was the judge of the S.W. Writers Contest, who awarded me first prize in the thriller category and was excited to take me on as a client.  It only took him a couple of months to realize there was no one interested in taking on a no name client during the recession.  His advice, publish it yourself.  He was smart, kind-hearted and honest.  He even helped format the book for ebooks knowing he would never receive a penny for his work.  Who else would have done that?  No one.

Now, two years later, the third book in the series is a reality.  After 10,000 people bought my Nick Bracco thrillers in December alone, the series seems to be finding an audience.  It's all I ever wanted when I began taking my literary career seriously some twenty years ago and if not for a broken publishing system and a caring agent, I would not have gotten this far.  I am grateful for the opportunity and it's rewarding to know that every time I sit at my computer and write, thousands of people will be reading those words.  A very heartfelt "Thank You" to my many readers and especially to Robert Brown.

Below is the opening to A Touch of Greed: 

When the blood stopped oozing from James Braden’s head, FBI Agent Ricky Hernandez knew his partner was finally dead. Hernandez was tucked behind a steel column in an abandoned airport hanger just inside the Mexican border. His partner was sprawled on the floor ten feet away, his body riddled with bullet holes from the ambush.

“Mr. Hernandez,” the man’s voice called out from behind him in a Mexican accent, “we have two kinds of soup today. We have chicken soup and we have screw-you soup. Unfortunately for you, we are out of chicken soup.”

A roomful of laughter echoed throughout the empty chamber of aluminum roofing and corrugated steel walls. Hernandez judged about thirty men surrounded him with AK-47s, while Hernandez had an FBI issue 9mm pistol with just one solitary bullet left. He stared at Braden’s corpse lying there in such an unnatural position, his eyes wide in horrified shock. Hernandez’s legs trembled. His left eye had an uncontrollable twitch. The desert heat was so viciously oppressive, his sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his chest.

The voice taunting Hernandez belonged to Antonio Garza, known as El Carnicero throughout the world of Mexican cartels. The Butcher. He was an infamous assassin with a legendary reputation for torturing anyone who crossed him. Including undercover FBI agents posing as drug dealers. Hernandez had seen the remains of the bodies Garza had left behind. Fingers, eyes, tongues, all severed and stuck inside the victim’s mouth, while the body floated in a vat of boiling water. The assassin was known to have a doctor on hand to continuously revive the victim and prolong the torment for hours, sometimes days.

“Mr. Hernandez,” Garza said, closer now. “I make you a deal. Come out right now and I let you speak with your family. You can say a proper farewell, eh?”

Hernandez was in shock, his mind numb to the statement.

“You can't be saved, so make your peace,” Garza ordered.

Among other things, Garza was a chronic liar. Hernandez was lured into Mexico while undercover, so there would be no rescue. He was out of US jurisdiction. Then it hit him. He still had a minute or two to say good-bye to his wife. He fumbled into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

“I’m waiting,” he heard Garza say.

Tears blurred his vision as he tried to find his Nicole’s number in his contact list. He was bawling now, warm urine leaked from his bladder. Once he’d heard her voice he realized he wouldn’t be able to speak. He was wasting too much time just trying to gather himself. Then he saw the name just above Nicole’s. Nick Bracco. Hernandez knew then what he needed to do with the remaining seconds of his life. He pushed the button.

“Time is up,” Garza called out.

“Hey, Ricky,” came the voice on the phone.

“Nick,” Hernandez stammered. “Nick can you . . .”

“What’s wrong?”

Hernandez’s hands shook, tears crawled down his face. “Please tell Nicole . . .” he hiccuped and whimpered, “how much I adore her.”

“Where are you, Ricky?” Nick demanded.

“Now!” the assassin screamed, a barrage of bullets exploded all around the agent as he shriveled up behind the column for protection. His legs were getting pounded by direct hits and ricochets.

“Ricky?” Nick shouted into the receiver.

The shooting stopped. The tops of Hernandez’s feet were missing, only two toes stood out among the bloody stumps. Hernandez’s stomach spiked up into his throat. “Nick,” he uttered. “Promise me you’ll kill him.”

Footsteps came shuffling up behind him and Hernandez dropped the phone between his legs. He took one last look at his partner, then said, “I’ll be right there, Jimmy.” As he braced the tip of his pistol tight under his chin, the one thought which remained, the one glimmer of solace which contained him, was the thought that Garza would not survive long. Hernandez had an irrational rush of jubilation. Nick Bracco had been notified. Ricky Hernandez smiled.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Here's a link to the Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/Touch-Greed-Bracco-Thriller-ebook/dp/B007C6EDJE/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1





           

5 QUESTIONS FOR THRILLER AUTHOR ALLAN LEVERONE

Over the past year and a half, I've highlighted some very talented writers just on the verge of becoming superstars--John Locke, Rick Murcer, and Robert Bidinotto are just a few.  I believe Allan Leverone is the next rising star in the publishing world.  His thriller, "The Lonely Mile," went from #11,000 on Amazon's Kindle bestseller list to #15 over one weekend, going from selling one book a day to selling several hundred a day.  He explains that here, plus his insider view of the future of publishing .  To me, the most intriguing part of Allan's career was the fact he actually got a job as an air traffic controller before ever stepping foot inside of an airplane.  He's been an air traffic controller at Boston's Logan airport for the past twenty years now and at 52 he's going to be forced to retire in four years.  Maybe, just maybe, if he continues on this torrid pace of selling thrillers, he might find a sweet home writing bestsellers and make a lot of readers happy.
Here's Allan:

1- How do develop your stories?  Do you outline, or fly by the seat of your pants?

I’ve outlined one book, and by the time I was maybe halfway through writing the first draft I had deviated so wildly from the damned thing it was completely useless. This outline, this supposed roadmap, which I had spent dozens of hours over several weeks developing, was now nothing more than a taunting reminder of how little I know about my own book when I start writing it.

That was the first, last, and only time I’ve ever outlined on paper before starting to write. This is not to say I have no idea where I’m going when I start a book, only that the process of outlining is just too specific for the way I write.

To me, writing a book is a little bit like taking a trip with a blindfold on. I know where I’m starting, and I have a pretty good idea where I want to end up, but the route I’m going to take to get from Point A to Point B is mostly a mystery. I might follow the highway, but I just might drive through a field and plow through a few houses, too. And that’s kind of good thing for a thriller writer, because if I have no idea what’s going to happen next, how in the world could a reader?

Plus, more often than not, I drive right on by Point B and end up somewhere in the vicinity of Point C. Or D.

2- Have you ever considered writing a series with a continuing protagonist?

I’ve absolutely considered it, and in fact, my newest release, PASKAGANKEE, is the first in what I envision as at least a three-book series. I’ve already completed the first draft of Book Two and am running ideas for Book Three around my twisted brain.

As you know, being an author yourself, the biggest hurdle facing any mostly unknown author—at least in terms of making sales—is the lack of name recognition. My theory is that readers don’t buy books, they buy authors. If a potential customer is trying to decide between buying my book and buying Harlan Coben’s latest release, I’m facing an uphill battle, because a hell of a lot more readers are familiar with Coben’s work than mine.

The advantage of writing a series is that not only does the reader become familiar with my name, but if they buy one book in a series and like it, they are that much more likely to buy another. And we all want sales. If we didn’t, we would just stick to keeping a journal. Fewer bad reviews, you know?

3- Give us a short recap of what happened a couple of weeks back with "The Lonely Mile," and how you ended up in the top 25 of the Amazon bestseller list?

Wow, what a ride! I had been promoting THE LONELY MILE pretty much nonstop since its release last July, trying various promotional ideas, giveaways, etc., without really ever gaining much traction in terms of sales. I was stuck in a rut, selling around thirty copies a month, give or take.

I had been extremely skeptical of Amazon’s Kindle Select promotional program, but after seeing numerous reports from authors I trusted, all saying their sales had spiked after taking part in it, Aaron Patterson (CEO at StoneHouse Ink, publisher of THE LONELY MILE) and I decided to give it a try. What did we have to lose?

The response was phenomenal. We gave away 42,000 copies over the three days of the giveaway, spending most of that time period at #1 in Amazon’s Free Store (Free Store – there’s an oxymoron for you). When we ended the promo and resumed charging for the book, sales went through the roof. We started the day at #11,000 in the Paid Kindle Store, and by the end of that day we were in the Top 100.

Over the next three days, we hovered at between #21 and #25 in all Kindle releases, got as high as #15 in all fiction titles, and camped out at #2 in Suspense Thrillers. We sold 8000 copies over that three day period, and although the pace of sales has slowed, it’s still several hundred times better, literally, than it was before starting the promotion. I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the unbelievable success of the promotion and the book.

4- What is your relationship like with Stonehouse Ink and what service do they provide for you?

StoneHouse Ink isn’t my first publisher, but when I heard my friend and bestselling author Vincent Zandri rave about this little publishing outfit in Boise, Idaho doing everything right, I knew immediately I wanted in.

To me, StoneHouse is kind of a hybrid, the perfect publishing model for this brave new epublishing world. They were among the first to utilize a strategy of epublishing first, following that up with print publication several months later. They pioneered the use of digital shorts as a way to raise the profile of their authors.

CEO Aaron Patterson understands the importance, also, of things like excellent cover art, solid, consistent editing, quality formatting of digital editions, and, most especially, how to sell books to the author’s best advantage at Amazon, the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the new publishing jungle.

I owe a lot to StoneHouse Ink, and you’ll have a hard time finding a more vocal proponent of the company than me.

5- What do you think the publishing world will look like in 5 years?

Man, everyone has opinions on this subject, and I’m no different.

I believe mass-market paperback books will disappear almost entirely, and sooner rather than later. The amount of overhead required to print books, warehouse them, ship them, deal with returns, etc., is staggering. At some point in the not-too-distant future, ereaders will become so cheap and so prevalent (we’re almost at that point right now, I believe) it will simply become too economically inefficient for any publisher to continue the mass-market paperback format.

This is not to suggest print books will disappear, though. I believe the biggest-selling megastar authors will continue to feature large print runs of their books, but all other authors will be featured in print-on-demand technology. The quality of that technology has risen almost to the point where you can’t tell the difference between it and offset printing, and the economics favor its use with all but the best-selling titles.

Hardcover books will continue and probably flourish, as collectors and the biggest fans will be happy to shell out the money for the latest Lee Child book, or (insert your favorite bestselling author’s name here) book.

Some of the biggest, top-heavy publishers, real biggies, will have to adapt, and quickly, or there will be a rush to bankruptcy as the big-name authors come to the conclusion they don’t need to be satisfied with the paltry royalty being offered by their Big-Six publisher when they can self-publish and work out a distribution deal for print books that will put far more greenbacks in their pockets than they’ve been used to. John Locke and his deal with Simon and Schuster for distribution of his physical books might be the most revolutionary thing to happen in the world of publishing. Ever. Mark my words on that one!

And I believe all this will happen in far less than five years. Publishing is undergoing its first real revolution in five hundred years, since the invention of offset printing, and we’re here to see it. It’s a pretty exciting time, unless your name is Random House.

5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR TREVOR SCOTT

Trevor Scott was an Eagle Scout, loaded weapons on Navy aircraft carriers, and spent seven years as an officer in the Air Force.  He's traveled to 60 different countries and lived in 15 different states.  I'm guessing a lot of his experiences show up in his writing, where he's published more than a dozen mystery, espionage and thriller novels worldwide.  His Jake Adams thrillers are consistently bestselling Kindle books.  His newest thriller is titled, "Way of the Sword."    

He was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to play 5 questions with me.

1- Tell us a little about your protagonist, Jake Adams, and how does he differ from other leading characters?

Jake Adams is a character I developed as a captain in the Air Force stationed in Germany. He's kind of a cross between James Bond and Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character.

2- Your plots are so creative, how do you work—with a strict outline, or do you wing it?

I rarely use a full outline to develop one of my novels. It's too constraining. Also, there are times when I have no idea what might happen. I'll usually know how a book will start and end, but getting to the climax can be an adventure for me as well as the reader.

3- Do you feel your military service allows you more insight than the average writer about the politics of terrorism?

As an Air Force officer stationed overseas, we were constantly briefed on terrorism. Additionally, I studied international relations and geopolitics at the graduate level while stationed in Germany. During the INF treaty implementation, I escorted Soviet inspectors around our secure nuclear facility. I'm sure their handlers were KGB and GRU officers.

4- What is your current relationship like with your publishers and how can you afford to sell some of your ebooks at just .99 cents?

It became obvious early on in the eBook market that pricing would drive sales. I've been selling eBooks since 1998, having best sellers in a number of the old platforms like the Rocket eBook and others. While it's true we are selling books and trying to make a living, it's equally true that what we are selling is pixels and digital files. It doesn't take as much to produce an eBook, since no trees are dying and no books are being shipped to warehouses and bookstores. By selling at a buck a book, I'm hoping to work on building a larger readership. So far sales have been great with this new price.

5- Any idea what the publishing world will look like in 5 years?

I believe the large New York publishers have had their day in the sun. You should see major authors selling directly to their readers, cutting out agents and publishers. Authors like myself (what they used to call mid-list authors) are already doing this. We have been the leaders in the eBook revolution.

THE REAL REASON SOCIAL MEDIA IS GOOD FOR WRITERS

Honestly, I haven't posted for a while because I never want to write a blog post which was done twelve thousand times before.  It's why I interview other writers, so I can get a different perspective and promote some authors whose work I respect.  But I'm almost finished with my third Nick Bracco thriller and I decided to stay home from work and get it done.  It sounded like a great idea until I tried it.  The house was quiet and the monitor was beckoning me to place those last few words onto the screen, but there's something you need to know about writing.  It's lonely.  There I said it.  Sitting at a computer and tapping the keys is a solitary chore and most writers like communicating with other people.  It's not normal to be cooped up by yourself for extended periods of time.  We need to know there's someone else out there enduring the same solitude we are.  For me, it's mostly other writers, readers and family members.  For others, it might be sports aficionados.  But when I need to know I'm not alone I can click on Facebook, or Twitter and see that the world is still out there and I can watch the globe communicate to each other as I create my next scene.

So, although many people feel social media is simply the newest way to promote your writing, I'm a firm believer it's not the main reason.  As a matter of fact, I'm a little timid in the self-promotion department myself.  I hate being pitched something, so I try to do as little pitching as possible.  I believe the main reason writers are so enamored by the lure of Facebook is because they need the connection to other humans while they're sitting by themselves creating their fictional worlds.  After all, truth is stranger than fiction, and have you seen some of the FB posts lately?  There's plenty of plots waiting to be written and writers would be well-served by watching some of the stuff scrolling down our screens each day. 

Okay, back to my own little world now.  Carry on, the rest of you.  Somehow I feel a little better knowing you're out there. 

5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR DANI AMORE

Dani Amore is a crime novelist living in Los Angeles, California. Her first novel, "Death by Sarcasm," has been in the top 100 on Amazon's Kindle bestseller list for almost a month.  That's where she brought to life, Mary Cooper, a Los Angeles-based private investigator with a quick wit and a steady aim.

Her second novel, "Dead Wood," introduces readers to John Rockne, a disgraced ex-cop and private investigator looking into the murder of a woman who built custom guitars.  Dani is a rare treat to interview and just by her answers alone I'd run to Amazon and check out her work.  Her answer to question # 4 should be put in the interview answer, "Hall of Fame." Thanks, Dani for your time.

1- The main character in your debut novel, "Death by Sarcasm," Mary Cooper is a very strong woman who doesn't take herself too seriously. Would you say that mirrors your own persona?

Well, we’re both totally friggin' hot. Beautifully sculpted a***s and all that, you know? But that’s about as far as any commonality goes between Mary Cooper and myself. She’s a lot stronger and tougher than me. She drinks wine, I prefer beer. And I take myself, and my work, very seriously. In fact, I believe my efforts at crime fiction are on the same plane as the achievements of Mother Theresa, Genghis Khan and Henry Winkler. If I keep going at this pace, I’m hoping people will mention my name and my legacy in the same breath with The Osmond Family. Fingers crossed, baby.

2- Your webpage is "deadlysarcasm.com" Does that pretty much explain your demeanor about creating your characters?

When I write a book, I feel like I’m a kid again in the back seat of the family station wagon going home after the Friday Night Fish Fry at the supper club, with my Dad at the wheel after a half dozen martinis. In other words, I’m reasonably confident I know where I’m going and will eventually get there, but there could be some funny, shocking, and downright scary moments before I do. I always set out to write the best crime novel I can. Sometimes the humor, or dark comedy, just lands on the page, like the trees that would just “jump out” and wrap themselves around the front bumper of my Dad’s car.

3- Sometimes sarcasm can be used to defuse the utterly disgusting images a private detective must come across. Is that one reason Mary Cooper has such a biting, sardonic wit?

Absolutely. It’s a defense mechanism. One thing I’m really looking forward to is revealing more about the basis for that. I’ll give you a hint: in DEATH BY SARCASM, it’s briefly mentioned that her parents were lost at sea when she was just a kid. In Book Two, a little more light will be shed on that, and in Book Three, it will be the primary focus. In the meantime, she’s not big on displaying vulnerability. And since the next book, MURDER WITH SARCASTIC INTENT, involves the porn industry, she’ll put that sarcastic shield to good use.

4- Has anyone ever interviewed you without using the word sarcasm once?

Yes. Barbara Walters and I met at my golf course, because she’d heard about my passion for swinging the sticks. Anyway, our tee time kept getting bumped so we plowed through about three pitchers of daiquiris. After a little bit of French kissing in the ladies locker room, Barbara and I finally got out on the course where she promptly passed out. I strapped her in the back of the cart with the clubs and finished the round. No interview, but I shot 3 over, which is pretty good for me.

5- Your second novel," Dead Wood," is also in the top 200 on Amazon's Bestseller list. What kind of sales were you expecting when you decided to publish as an Indie author, and to what do you attribute your astounding success?

Let me put it this way. Do you remember a few years back when Stephen King was run over by that car? Well, I expected my sales to be so torrential that they would do the same kind of damage to Mr. King, physically, professionally and psychologically. (I’m kidding of course! I love Stephen King and his book On Writing is a must-read.)

Let’s be honest, though. Compared to the John Lockes and Amanda Hockings of the world, my progress has actually been very modest. And despite my belief that there might be a small market for crime fiction with my brand of humor and strong female characters, I figured I wouldn’t sell even one copy.

So I appreciate and thank every one of my readers, and thank you Gary, for allowing me to stop by. That last line was sincere, so now I’ve fulfilled my quota for the year.

THE NEW BREED

There's a new breed of author out there--brash, unfiltered and untouched by the New York publishing industry.  These are writers who chose to go it alone without a life jacket or the approval from the establishment.  Shame on them.  They bypassed and integral part of the system.  The part where an editor in NYC decides whether his publishing house can make a bunch of money off their book.  The reason these fine men and women decided to skip this step was because: A- They decided they could make more money on their own without a publisher taking 85% of the profits, or B: They didn't need to make a killing from their book sales, because they don't have to pay rent in an uptown Manhattan high-rise, or pay a bunch of staff, or any number of expenses a big publisher incurs.

Now, I never bag on big name authors, they deserve all the accolades and revenue they derive from the current system.  I've interviewed many of them on this blog and will continue to do so.  I just felt it was time to promote some very talented writers who deserve even more attention than they've received.

Victorine E. Lieske:    "Not What She Seems."   Steven Ashton, a billionaire from New York, and Emily Grant, on the run from the law...and when they meet he can’t help falling for her. What he doesn’t know is that interfering in her life will put his own life in danger.

Chris Culver: "The Abbey."  Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective who can't stand the thought of handling another death investigation. In another year, he'll be out of the department completely. That's the plan, at least, until his niece's body is found in the guest home of one of his city's most wealthy citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash launches an investigation to find his niece's murderer, but the longer he searches, the more entangled he becomes in a case that hits increasingly close to home. If he doesn't solve it fast, his niece won't be the only family member he has to bury.

Dani Amore: "Death by Sarcasm."  Mary learns that her uncle, a former stand-up comedian has been murdered. She is asked to assist in finding the killer by both the police and family members. Mary quickly discovers that her uncle’s death was just the opening act for a bloody rampage. As Mary investigates, she exposes a dark and deadly legacy with mysterious links to her own past.


The common thread of all of these books are: A- They've been written by Indie authors. B- They are extremely well reviewed books. C- They are all currently in the top 100 on Amazon's bestseller list for Kindle books.
If you're looking for a good read, give one of these books a try.  You're going to get the story straight from the author's mouth, exactly the way they wanted it.
Happy reading.

5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR MICHAEL PRESCOTT

All you have to do is glance at Amazon's top 100 kindle books to notice Michael Prescott's presence.  He's all over the place.  Including the top 10 for quite some time.  His publishing story is conventional, yet the way he became an Indie writer is unique.  The theme which run through his story is very familiar.  You'll notice a resemblance to other writer's stories, which means there may be a common thread to success.  I can guarantee, however, talent and a lot of hard work is still your best bet.  Fortunately for Michael he has both, tremendous talent and a good work ethic.

Thanks, Michael.

1- What convinced you to convert your titles to e-books and was it a scary leap?

I started out by self-publishing a thriller called Riptide, which had failed to find a traditional publisher. Basically I just wanted to get the book into print in some form, as a vanity project. I was focused mainly on the print-on-demand edition, which I put out through CreateSpace. The Kindle edition was an afterthought. I figured as long as I'd gone to all the trouble of revising the book, formatting it, creating a cover, and so forth, I might as well make it available in ebook form. As it turned out, the ebook edition ultimately sold much, much better than the POD edition.

Still, sales were pretty small at first. I put out a couple of my backlist titles as ebooks just to get them back into print. I thought maybe if I was lucky I could generate a few hundred dollars a year in royalties, and of course I would be keeping the books alive, since the print editions were long since defunct.

Then a friend of mine, J. Carson Black, who writes suspense novels, experimented with dropping the prices of her ebooks to only $0.99. Her sales took off in a big way. After some trepidation, I decided to follow suit and see if I could have the same kind of success. It was really the change to $0.99 that got the ball rolling. Before that, sales were slow, but once the price dropped to that level, sales started to grow and eventually snowballed. There is a whole subset of ebook fans who look for bargain-priced books, and there are discussion boards hosted by Amazon that focus on such books and invite authors to promote their work.

2- Stealing Faces was the best selling e-book in the US way back in 1999. Do you remember how many copies you sold that year to accomplish that feat?

I don't remember how many copies it was, but I'm sure it was a very small number, probably less than 1,000. At the time, the main ebook reader was something called the Rocket eBook, a neat little device with a backlit monochromatic screen. It was expensive, about $500, and had limited functionality, but the design was ergonomic and it was possible to download a lot of free books from Project Gutenberg and other sources. I used my Rocket eBook for years and caught up on a lot of classics that I should have read earlier. I remember particularly enjoying Robinson Crusoe.

My publisher, Penguin Books, decided to put out Stealing Faces as an ebook before the print edition was released. It was the first time a major publisher had done that. It was a publicity stunt, and it worked pretty well, generating good sales for Stealing Faces and creating a little bit of media buzz. The book ended up selling very well in mass-market paperback, but the ebook market was too small at that time to amount to much.

3- Tell us what occurred which caused you to change your author name from Brian Harper to Michael Prescott, and is it sometimes an advantage to be a lesser known commodity?

Both names are pseudonyms, and I changed from one to the other because after doing six books as Brian Harper, my sales figures had slumped. Retailers were reluctant to continue ordering my books in large quantities. You really are only as good as your last book, so once you have even one flop, it affects your ability to get your next book into the stores. This becomes a vicious spiral, because each subsequent book gets a smaller and smaller order from the retailers and inevitably sells worse and worse. It's really a pretty stupid system, and it's one reason I'm not sorry to see traditional publishing and brick-and-mortar stores go away.

The only way around this problem was to reinvent myself under a new name. Since the retailers didn't know that Michael Prescott was really Brian Harper, they had no track record of sales to deter them from ordering my book. So I was able to get my titles back into the stores, and sales were generally good, though later on they declined when the entire mass-market paperback end of the book industry started going through a crisis. Pocket-sized paperbacks are definitely on the way out now. The industry has failed to keep them viable, and sooner or later they'll be replaced by trade paperbacks and ebooks, in my opinion.

4- Do you have a recurring protagonist running through any of your books or are they all stand alone thrillers?

For a long time I resisted the idea of doing a series or even a sequel, because I thought it was more creative to come up with new characters for each book. But then my editor at the time, Doug Grad, suggested that since I had written a number of books about strong female characters, and since they mostly lived in Los Angeles, it might be interesting to put two or three of them together in one novel. At first I was going to have three characters meet up, but that got too complicated, so I simplified it to only two–Tess McCallum, who starred in my novel Next Victim, and Abby Sinclair, who starred in The Shadow Hunter. They worked well together because they were opposites. Their first meeting was in Dangerous Games, and I was happy enough with the way it turned out that I wrote two more books featuring the duo–Mortal Faults and Final Sins. I discovered that I'd been wrong about a series being less creative. In some ways, reusing the same characters forces you to be more creative by coming up with new ways of exploring their issues, backgrounds, and personalities.

5- What advice would you give a new author if they asked you whether they should go the traditional route to publication, or start out as an Indie writer?

Well, I'm biased because I've been doing very well in the independent ebook market, while I found my years in traditional publishing to be quite frustrating at times. If you long for the opportunity to see your book in print and on display in stores, then it makes sense to go the traditional route, though it's getting harder to do that. As for me, I don't really care about print editions or bookstore displays anymore, so I'm perfectly happy to release the books in digital editions, even without a print counterpart.

One advantage of traditional publishing is that you may pair up with an excellent editor who can give you valuable guidance and improve your skills. Certainly I benefited from some very good editing throughout my career, particularly in the earlier years, when I needed it the most. On the other hand, it's extremely difficult even to obtain a literary agent, let alone to get a book deal with a major publisher, and even if you do get a deal, it probably won't be for much money, and there will probably be a long and frustrating delay before the book is released. Everything moves very, very slowly in traditional publishing–it's almost a glacial pace. It took more than two years for my publisher to bring out my very first novel, and by the time it came out, the genre that it belonged to had fallen out of fashion and the book didn't do well.

So it's really a mixed bag, but for me personally, I'd say that self-publishing my books in ebook editions has worked out so well that I would not want to return to traditional publishing. And honestly, I don't know how much longer traditional publishing will even be a viable option for most writers. Though I doubt that traditional publishing will become completely extinct, I do think there will be fewer books appearing in print, if only because there are fewer bookstores in existence. The future belongs to digital technology, so in that sense I guess I would advise someone who's just starting out to focus on the future, not the past.

5 QUESTIONS FOR NY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR TIM GREEN

I have to admit, I was compelled to reach out to Tim because of my 9-year-old son.  He is a huge fan of Tim's series of sports books where the protagonist is a terrific baseball player, yet struggles with grown up issues which all adolescents have to cope with at one point in their lives.

If you're keeping score at home, Tim is also an attorney who played defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons for 8 years.  He's also been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a star player at Syracuse University where he graduated as the valedictorian.  He's extremely busy with a career as a journalist as well as coaching a local high school football team.  Somehow Tim found time to answer some questions, even one my son wanted to know.  Thanks Tim.

1- The kids in your novels are so rich and realistic--do you think you could've created such deep characters if you didn't have kids of your own?

HAVING KIDS OF MY OWN AND COACHING YOUNG PEOPLE IS THE KEY TO THE DEPTH AND SCOPE OF MY CHARACTERS.

2- Benji is the comic relief for all the tension provided in your stories, is he based on any one person, and do your kids chime in with their own Benji-isms?

BENJI IS BASED ON A REAL AND CLOSE FRIEND OF MY SON TROY. WHEN I STARTED THIS SERIES, HE WAS 12. HE NOW PLAYS FOR ME ON THE VARSITY FOOTBALL TEAM.

3- Even though your novels are written for kids, you manage to incorporate very mature themes throughout your narrative --divorce, steroids, bribing umpires. Was that a conscious decision, or a product of mining for good material to draw from?

I CONSCIOUSLY DEVELOP MY STORIES AROUND THESE KIND OF THEMES. MY FIRST PRIORITY AS A WRITER IS TO ENTERTAIN KIDS WITH ACTION, RICH AND BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS, SHORT CHAPTERS, AND ACCESSIBLE LANGUAGE. HOWEVER, I FEEL THAT KIDS ARE VERY SMART AND THE LIFE LESSONS I'VE LEARNED AND THE ONES I TRY TO IMPART ON MY OWN KIDS AND THE KIDS I COACH ARE ALSO ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS TO MY BOOKS.

4- Are your kids involved in sports and have they ever provided you with material for your stories?

MY KIDS SPORTS ACTIVITIES DO PROVIDE MUCH OF MY MATERIAL, BUT I ALSO USE MY OWN EXPERIENCES WHICH REMAIN VIVID IN MY MIND'S EYE. (THOUGH NOT A LOT OF OTHER THINGS SEEM TO!)

5- Since you're a multi-talented author with many adult thrillers reaching the NY Times bestseller list, how has the emergence of digital devices affected your own career and how do you see it affecting the future of publishing?


I PREFER BOOKS TO E-READERS, BUT I HAVE AN E-READER AND I THINK WHATEVER FORM KIDS WANT TO USE IS JUST FINE. IN A WAY, E-READERS CAN MAKE STORIES EVEN MORE ACCESSIBLE AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. I ALSO BELIEVE THAT THE TWEEN MARKET I'M NOW WRITING TO WILL REMAIN ONE OF THE STRONGEST (IF NOT THE STRONGEST) SECTOR OF THE BOOK MARKET.

THANKS, GARY. I APPRECIATE YOUR KIND AND VERY INTELLIGENT OBSERVATIONS ABOUT MY BOOKS.

DO YOU READ BOOKS FROM INDIE AUTHORS?

I was reading an article in a recent Poets and Writers Magazine where they interviewed several new authors and asked each one how they found their literary agent. One said they had met their agent through a friend of a friend.  Another was introduced to their agent through a mutual friend.  After the third one said their neighbor was an agent, I immediately threw the magazine in the recycle bin.  It reminded me why I'd become and Indie writer in the first place.  I'm not suggesting any of these fine writers aren't talented, but unless your neighbor works at Harper Collins, I'm thinking you found your path to getting published a bit more arduous than some of these authors.

There are many writers who still look down at the whole Indie thing as rather unseemly and I get that.  I was one of those people just last year.  I was able to acquire an agent (who's not a neighbor) by winning the S.W. Writers Award, but with so few publishers willing to risk taking on a new author, there weren't a lot of opportunities out there.  Which brings me to my question: Do you read books from Indie authors?  It seems that writers are much more aware of the Indie label than readers are.  For example, did you know the current NY Times bestselling author of The Mill River Recluse, Darcy Chan, is an Indie author?  How about NY Times bestseller of The Abbey, Chris Culver?  Do you even care?

I pay attention to such things because it's important to me.  Although I've interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, I want to keep track of the market and even go out of my way to support the Indie movement.  Now that pretty much anyone can publish an E-Book whenever they wish, there's a lot of mediocre stuff out there.  So I try to sift through the pile and shine a light on the authors which I believe have written some good work.  John Locke, Rick Murcer and Robert Bidinotto are just a few which have been highlighted here and have gone on to tremendous success.  As a reader, has the lower prices compelled you to try new authors?  And if they have, what is your experience?

5 QUESTIONS FOR AUTHOR J. CARSON BLACK

J. Carson Black was a really good writer for quite a long time until New York lost interest and the dreaded midlist label was placed on her head.  Somewhere in the middle of 2010 she decided to try the arduous task of reinventing herself and starting over as an Indie writer.  Now, her Laura Cardinal Mysteries and stand alone thrillers have sold over 230,000 copies just in the past few months.  Just another example of an ambitious writer getting over on the Big 6 publishers.  I found her very accessible and friendly, someone you want to see succeed because you just know it'll never go to her head.  I think you'll enjoy her story:

1. After a solid career as relatively little known author you recreated yourself as J. Carson Black and went Indie. How did the name change come about and explain why it’s better sometimes to be an unknown author than to work on growing your past success.

Gary, I had seven books published by New York publishers. While it was wonderful to sell a book to a New York publisher, I was paid only $2500 for my first book. In fact, five of my books were in that range. The most I was ever paid by my publishers, Kensington and Dorchester, was $3500. That’s no way to make a living!

I worked hard to bring up my game, and wrote the first book in a crime fiction/thriller series called DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN. I approached my former editor, who had moved to a new house—New American Library. She loved the book and we signed a two-book deal. I’d already planned to change my name, and liked the name J. Carson Black, so that was what we went with. The secret here is this: by simply changing my name (and writing a better book), my two-book deal with NAL came to eighteen times the amount I made for my last sale to a publisher--a one-book deal with Dorchester.

Here’s why. Say Barnes & Noble orders 6 books for each store. Because of the way publishing has been structured, the publishers print more books than they can sell, so they expect to sell about half those books. Barnes & Noble sells 3 books. The following year, they order 3 books—half what they ordered last time. The publisher uses the orders to decide the print run, so now you’ve got only half the number of books you sold last year going into the stores. They’re not seen in as many places, and thus begins the downward spiral. There are authors who can buck the trend with the publisher’s help, but generally speaking, most authors’ sales go down. And now that author’s name and record are in the bookseller’s computer. No one wants to back a writer with dwindling sales, so the booksellers across the board will order fewer books by this writer. This is why authors are asked to change their names when they come up with something new and different.

When my agent went out with my new thriller, THE SHOP, I changed my name again. My agent took the book to the best editors and publishers on the highest level, and she was sure we’d get six figures for it. She must have submitted to 35 publishers—I’ve lost track—and no one picked it up. Early this year, having experienced the same downturn in our economy as the rest of the country, I was just hoping and praying to get a deal with Kensington again—even $2500 would help! They turned me down—a fortunate turn of events.

When we put the books up on amazon, I decided to stick with the pen name J. Carson Black for all my books. Some of my books say “J. CARSON BLACK Writing as Margaret Falk.”

2 .In the summer of 2010 you decided to put you backlisted work on Amazon as a Kindle book. Were there any fingernails left after you’d only sold three copies the first two months?

Pretty awful, isn’t it? My husband and publisher, Glenn McCreedy, got the rights back to all my books. He started putting them up on Amazon. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. I liked coming up with the covers, but after that I thought it was a fool’s errand. I didn’t pay much attention to what was happening with those books.

But Glenn is a patient man, and just kept putting up books. And I loved coming up with covers—the two of us work on this together, although he does the hard part in Photoshop.

3. Speaking of your husband, Glenn McCreedy, he runs Breakaway Media which, among other things, distributes your ebook. Do you two work well together?

Glenn and I understand each other. We both have a good eye for composition, and we study the market. We try to emulate the Big Six publishers by following what they’re doing—their latest offerings. Both of us decided to make the books look like big hardcovers to create a unified look---a brand people can recognize and be comfortable with. Since most of my books are in the mystery/crime fiction/thriller category, it’s not hard to present that unified front.

We like tossing around ideas. We try to think how best to present a book, and study other successful authors. We’re small and nimble enough to make decisions on the fly—to try different things---and if they don’t pan out, we go back to the tried and true. For a while we both thought we were geniuses, but I really do think amazon’s algorithms have more to do with our success than anything else. Write a good book, present it well, and keep it simple: a reader should know by looking at the cover what kind of book they’re buying.

I look at it this way: when the wave comes, you have to be paddling your surfboard in the right direction.

4. You’ve signed a three-book deal with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer beginning with you book, “The Shop.” Was that a nerve-racking decision or was it a welcome sight?

I always wanted to get back in with the Big Six. When my agent said, “I’ve done all I can---there’s just no other place I can send the book,” I was deeply disappointed. I asked for her blessing to put THE SHOP up on Amazon, and she said, “Why not?” Three weeks later, the book took off. By the end of that month, everything had changed. I did not want to sell my books to a Big Six publisher. I began to remember the bad things about New York publishing—the diminishing returns, the smell of death surrounding an author whose second book doesn’t do as well as the first. The phone call that starts with, “You know how much I love your books, but…”

Still, I knew you can’t stay on top with any book forever. We have more books and I’m writing a fourth Laura Cardinal novel, but we knew there would be ebbs and flows. When I saw Thomas & Mercer buying up Konrath and Crouch, I thought: that’s something I’d really like to find out about. And then Barry Eisler came over. That was a major turning point for the industry. I emailed my agent and said, “Can we get with Thomas & Mercer?”

Think about it: Amazon is the elephant in the room. They have all that power, and they know how to market books. The whole distribution system the publishers had is coming apart at the seams, because Amazon has changed the way books are bought and sold. Amazon is a smart company. They know how many books by an author they sell, they know how to boost that up with their algorithms, and they’d devised the most powerful selling tool in the world: the also-boughts. When your book starts to appear in the also-boughts of other authors, you can be seen hundreds of thousands of times a day. They say that it takes the average person seven times of seeing a product before it even registers. Amazon provides a Hall of Mirrors for your books. At a certain point, if you’re lucky and your book is good, the algorithms take over and propel you up the best seller lists. Thomas & Mercer was the only publisher I wanted.

But at the same time, we wanted to keep the Laura Cardinal books and some of my other books.

5. Look into your crystal ball and tell us what the publishing world will look like in five years.

I’m not very good at that, but I’ll try. I think Amazon is going to dominate publishing for the next three to five years. They are out to bigfoot everybody else, and I’d rather be with them than against them.

This has been a wonderful time for authors, because so many good writers are finally getting a chance to sell directly to readers. I don’t know how long this will last, but it is a Golden Age of sorts. More and more midlist authors who found it impossible to build a career with the New York publishers are coming over to ebooks. And there are talented newcomers who couldn’t sell to New York, but really have the goods.

I don’t know how long this particular phase will last. It might be like the Gold Rush of the nineteenth century. The first adopters may be the ones who do the best. There will be changes—some big, some small---and it’s hard to tell where we’ll be five years from now. But I can’t help but think that Amazon will be running the show.

DOES THE .99 CENT PRICE SCARE E-BOOK READERS AWAY?

My uncle phoned me recently to tell me of a friend of his who'd read both my books and absolutely loved them. This friend is retired from the movie industry and an avid reader, yet it took him a year of my uncle's nagging to finally get to my books. Why did it take so long for him to read them? The price. He told my uncle, "How good could they be if he's selling them for .99 cents?” He also told him, as many other people have, that I'm doing myself a disservice by pricing my book so low. Serious readers will be turned off.

There's some validity to his comment. The perception of a cheap product is that's it's . . . well . . . cheap. Let's face it, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is—right? I mean if a stranger calls you at home and congratulates you for winning a free vacation you'd never entered to win, you hang up as quickly as possible—right? I do anyway. So it's understandable for readers to be suspicious.

Now it's hard to have a serious conversation about .99 cent e-books without bringing up John Locke. Just in the past year John decided to direct his focus on the publishing world and made no bones about the fact he wanted to be the most successful .99 cent author on the planet. Mission accomplished. It's easy to point fingers here, I mean if you live in a neighborhood of $250,000 homes and someone starts selling their investment houses on your street for $99,000—guess what? You now live in a $99,000 home.

But this isn't John's fault and he bears no responsibility for this situation. On the contrary, without John's success, hundreds of Indie authors would never get their books read without his rise to the top of the charts and subsequent media attention. It's not his fault we don't have his marketing skills. Remember, the guy was an extremely successful businessman before he ever laid eyes on the publishing world and set his goals.

So how do we break these preconceived notions? How do we convince readers to take a chance on an unproven commodity like a cheap e-book from an unknown author? Become a known author! That's right, you sell your books for .99 cents or $2.99 or $4.99 because you want to develop fans. There are hoards of readers out there just looking for new talent and when they find it, boy they'll latch on to you for life. You can't compete with James Patterson's name, but you can undercut his price to lure potential readers to your writing. And remember, the strongest marketing tool is word of mouth. People who do buy those inexpensive e-books will tell their friends about it and so on and so on.

Now here's the important part of this entire conversation: don't rush out there and throw garbage onto Amazon just because John Locke made millions selling these things and why can't you? If you're serious about developing a fan base, then write quality books, then write more quality books, then repeat. You may need to write 20 novels before you can make a nice little income from your sales, but it will be a result of your hard work and passion. And after all, isn't that why we began writing in the first place, because we had a passion to write? At least that's why I started and I think there's many of you out there who began the same way. Never lose sight of that fact.

5 QUESTIONS FOR THRILLER AUTHOR ROBERT BIDINOTTO

Robert Bidinotto is an award-winning investigative journalist whose 1988 piece in Readers Digest, "Getting Away with Murder," stirred a national controversy about crime and prison furlough programs. That article was honored as a 1989 National Magazine Award finalist by the American Society of Magazine Editors. While editor-in-chief at The New Individualist Magazine, Robert was also a 2007 Gold Winner of Folio’s prestigious “Eddie” Award for editorial excellence—the magazine industry’s highest honor.  

When at the age of 60, Robert decided to take a stab at fiction, he used all of his investigative skills and spent two years just researching and plotting his first novel--"Hunter."  Now, just three short months after being released, "Hunter" has become the top rated Kindle book for Spy Stories and Tales of Intrigue, and is at the top of Thrillers as well.

Whenever I see solid, lesser-known writers gaining traction within the publishing world I want to know more about these people and expose their story to my readers.  So enjoy Robert Bidinotto's journey:

1- As an award-winning investigative journalist, you’ve seen the seedier side of the real world—what made you decide to write fiction? Was that always a desire for you?


When I was a little kid, my brother and I would make up and act out stories. Later, when I was in school, I remember being given an essay assignment: “What did you do on your summer vacation?” I started it the conventional way, but slowly turned it into a science-fiction fantasy in which I was kidnapped by a UFO. Fortunately, the teacher appreciated my creativity and gave me an “A.”

So yes, I’ve always loved to write—had to write—and I’ve wanted to write fiction since at least my teens. But I had no idea how to go about it. So instead, I pursued my interest in current events and politics and began a career writing about those topics. I wrote everything from investigative journalism to book and film reviews, essays, speeches, and opinion columns.

Still, my yearning to write fiction wouldn’t rest. Over the decades, I outlined a number of stories; but Life always somehow got in the way, and eventually I outgrew those stories before finishing them.

You know, Gary, it’s scary when you reach age 60 and there are still major “to do” items on your Bucket List. I felt that if I died without finishing and publishing a novel, my life would be a failure. So, after getting a brainstorm in November 2009, I decided to get on with it. Even though our financial circumstances were not ideal for setting aside time to write a novel, my dear wife understood and encouraged me.

I worked on HUNTER whenever I could, while continuing nonfiction contract work. It was by far the hardest writing assignment I’d ever tackled. But I vowed to myself that I would finish it by June 5, 2011—my 62nd birthday. Well, I completed the manuscript and printed out the final pages at 11 p.m. on June 4th—with one hour to spare. I can’t begin to describe to you how I felt as I put those final pages on the stack. I was a basket case for a week afterward.

2- While changing names or locations, of course, are there times when you’ve used pieces of real events in your fiction?

Absolutely. Certain well-known events over the past two decades play important roles in the personal history of the title character in HUNTER. This backstory is revealed about three-quarters of the way through the book: It’s part of the mystery about this man and what motivates him. Real-life events at the CIA also motivate the heroine, Annie Woods, who works there as a security investigator.

As for locations, the tale is centered in and around Washington, D.C. I live nearby and used to work downtown, so I’m familiar with many of the settings in the story. As for those places that I hadn’t or couldn’t visit in person, I found “Google Earth” to be invaluable—especially its “street view” feature. It allowed me to take “virtual” tours of those locales and add realistic descriptive details to the scenes.

3- In your novel, HUNTER, Dylan Hunter is not your typical protagonist. Tell me how you created him and how he’s different from other operatives?

You’re right, Gary—he’s not typical, and that was a deliberate choice. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to compete with great thriller writers like you, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, or Lee Child by creating some clone. I knew that my hero had to be completely distinctive.

The idea for the Dylan Hunter character emerged from my background years ago as an investigative journalist writing “true crime” articles for Reader’s Digest. I was outraged by the leniency toward predators in our so-called “criminal justice system.” As I investigated and wrote articles exposing these practices, I befriended victims of thugs who had been freed by our “revolving-door” legal system. The faces of these crime victims haunted my dreams then, and ever since.

In a sense, I became a crusading journalistic avenger on their behalf. Dylan Hunter—an idealistic journalist at war with the corrupt legal system—is a cathartic fictional projection of my own fantasies of retribution.

As for how he is distinctive: First, Hunter is an intellectual tough guy. Yes, he’s hard as nails; but he’s also highly educated, witty, well-read, even philosophical. At core, Hunter is an idealist, a crusader for strict, absolute justice. He isn’t responding only to some immediate physical threat or narrow injustice, as most “lone-wolf” fictional heroes are. Instead, he takes on big, controversial issues and systemic injustices. And his enemies aren’t limited to the usual criminals and terrorists; they include some of the most politically powerful and intellectually influential people in society. Moreover, because he upholds absolutely merciless justice, Dylan Hunter also stands alone against much of the wider society, too.

Second, there’s this big mystery about his background and identity, as well as his motives. From the moment this guy appears in the story, it’s clear that there’s a lot about him that he’s hiding from everyone else. He’s living in lonely isolation, with only his pet cat for company. And he seems driven by goals that are not clear to the reader, or even to the woman who loves him. Who is Dylan Hunter? That question is a big part of the story’s suspense, as much as the dangers and perils he faces.

The result, I think, is a fast-paced, suspenseful vigilante thriller that also challenges the reader to rethink some of his core values and assumptions along the way. One reviewer described HUNTER as “a thinking man’s Death Wish.” Another described it as “Batman meets Jason Bourne.” I laughed when I read those reviews, but there’s a lot of truth in both analogies.

4- The response to “Hunter,” has been remarkable. Did you expect this kind of success? And what were your expectations?

Let me be completely frank with you, Gary: When I finished HUNTER, I had no idea whether it was any damned good at all. Honestly—not a clue. Sure, I’d written award-winning nonfiction for decades. But creating fresh characters, a serpentine plot, engaging dialogue, and imaginary settings from thin air, then weaving it all together into a compelling tale, involves skill sets entirely different from nonfiction writing.

So, when I stared at that stack of manuscript pages, I didn’t know whether I’d written something awful, great, or just mediocre. Only when my wife and then my “beta readers” came back with wildly enthusiastic responses did I dare begin to hope that I might have created something special.

The reader reviews at Amazon and Barnes & Noble have blown me away. As of this moment, there are 57 customer reviews on Amazon; 54 of them are “5 stars,” two are “4 stars”—all raves—and only one, from an anonymous reader, is negative. Based on those customer reviews, HUNTER is the #1 “Top Rated” novel in three Kindle categories: Thrillers, Romantic Suspense, and Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue. It also is reader-ranked #2 among all Kindle “Mysteries and Thrillers,” and number #3 among all “Romance” novels.

I never expected that, not in a million years, and I’m grateful to my readers. They’ve made it possible for me to continue writing future Dylan Hunter adventures.

5- With the publishing world going digital, what do you see the industry looking like in 5 years?

Nobody can predict with certainty what publishing will look like in the future. But a few things seem clear.

The traditional publishing business model is circling the drain. That model focuses on publishers estimating future customer demand and delivering print books to retail outlets, which then return a large percentage of the unsold books back to publishers, or dump them at a loss onto remainder tables. This outmoded business model constitutes a colossal waste of capital and resources in the digital age. It’s a lousy deal for customers and for authors.

Customers increasingly prefer the convenience and lower cost of online book purchases, particularly ebooks. No print publisher or brick-and-mortar store, with their huge overheads, can possibly compete with the vast online inventory and almost-instant delivery available to somebody sitting in his easy chair or on a beach somewhere with a Kindle or Nook in his hands.

As retail outlets disappear and print press runs fall, ebooks constitute an ever-growing percentage of book sales; yet authors find that their publishers take the lion’s share of their ebook royalties. By self-publishing ebooks, though, we authors can cut out the middle men—publishers, bookstores, even agents—keeping most of our royalties and all of our rights. Amazon has pioneered this process, and I think the consequent decline of big publishers and chain bookstores is inevitable.

Still, I think print books do have a future, Gary, because many people still prefer them. But the production model likely will be “print on demand,” which many indie authors are adopting already. That option doesn’t require big publishing houses or bookstore outlets.

One thing for sure: More of us will become what I call “vigilante authors,” taking business matters into our own hands. We’ll assume full responsibility, not just as authors of books, but also for their publication and marketing. We’ll contract for the services we need, at costs far less than the royalty shares we now surrender to publishers, bookstores, and agents.

In short, I predict that five years from now, we’ll be enjoying the Golden Age of Authors. We’re already seeing its first glimmers right now.