The Ethical Authors Pledge

All self-pubished authors are encouraged to endorse the Ethical Authors pledge from the Alliance of Independent Authors. Follow them on Twitter at #ethicalauthor.

The Juno Letters was recently featured on DBR Book News Weekly - the review from Susan Keefe of Audiobook Monthly. Good to see Juno in print across the globe! A special thanks to Susan for all her hard work promoting The Juno Letters.

I will be spending the next seven months at Children's Hospital in Seattle with one of my foster boys who will be undergoing cancer treatment. I will try to keep up with everything, including publishing book 5 - The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh, now in pre-release at SMASHWORDS for free. I want to thank everyone who has already sent good wishes - sorry, I have to keep the boy's name private. We are all praying for a complete recovery.

Mobile Reading Trends: How solid is the Kindle's position?

The title of this blog is actually an article that came out of the Frankfurt book fair - Mobile Reading Trends: How solid is the Kindle's position? (http://personanondata.blogspot.co.uk) by Michael Cairns. He makes an interesting point. The rise of the iPhone as an eBook reading device and iBooks as the default reader of choice threatens Amazon's hegemony - already slipping in percentage share and topping out in total sales and profits.

Coming from a technical background I have always kept up with the important readings of my industry. Publishing is no different. Too often we get stuck in the trenches and fail to see the business world around us changing. This may be one of those moments.

I have posted in previous blogs about my distaste for the eBook format - frankly, it makes books ugly. The lack of satisfaction in the reading experience is not going away just because Amazon built an early lead in its sales. Quite the opposite - Amazon is being challenged daily, and I am not talking about the lame excuses of Hatchett in trying to defend its antiquated power position eroded by the new technology.

I don't have the answers, but I encourage you to read this article. One thing is certain - look at where we are in the eBook market today - tomorrow will be different.

Thank God.

The State(lessness) of the eBook Market

Books used to be works of art. Typesetting was to the printed page what good lighting and backgrounds were to photography. You learned the craft from the masters, and the writer seldom if ever violated that sacred space. Not any more. The e-book has destroyed the art of book-making, at least temporarily.

The e-book is an oddity. It is a child of a general technology revolution that attacks the pillars of traditionalism with nary a plan to follow its invasion. Back when the “point and click” interface first turned the computing world upside down, the first victim was design in the revolution called desktop publishing. It turned that world inside out, and the result was a surge of very bad product - stuff that your middle school child would produce in their first newsletter class.

Other traditional markets soon felt the assault. Video production, music production, music retailing ... these and others fell victim to the emerging prowess of the software and hardware armies marching through complacent corporations on their way to world domination.

Then came the e-book. (If this were a video blog, you could hear the sigh ... just use your imagination - heresy in the tech world, I know, but there you go). Easy to create, easy to publish, easy to price cheaply. A revolution - followed by a surge of poorly written works masquerading as books. That is not necessarily a bad thing. I am a believer in the leveling effects of the marketplace to weed out bad writers. Like any product, to remain a writer and prosper, you need to write well. Bad product will disappear by itself. But that is not the entire issue.

E-book readers are at once helping establish the new market and contributing to its failure to embrace the art of the book. Scholarly studies are now being published that study e-book reader behavior relative to product and electronic reading devices. Shin (2010) describes the relationships between perceptions of quality both in terms of product and delivery on a function he calls confirmation - a key to gratification and therefore continued purchasing of e-books and e-book devices (274). While not specifically calling out the current state of the mobi or epub file formats, Shin acknowledges that users “continue to favour [sic] some characteristics of paper books” and that “some emotional factors are missing from the e-book experience” (261).

Quality of product is one of the core components of the gratification process (274). It is here that e-books fall way short of their potential even within the ability of current technology. The rudimentary appearance of the typical e-book lacks the aesthetic qualities of print that enhance a reader’s experience. Proprietary approaches to e-books and their reading devices contribute to this problem - both in terms of delivery and quality.

Amazon’s Kindle gives the appearance it can only read files purchased from Amazon’s e-book retail store - which is not entirely true technically, but from a user’s perspective true enough. The mobi file format is a poor representation of the art of a book while at the same time makes vast amounts of electronic books available. Amazon’s market clout means that to many users, the Kindle and its rudimentary product appearance represents the state of the e-book product. Once comfortable with this marginal level of product, few readers will show a willingness to explore other options (Shin, 261).

Apple has their own proprietary response in the iBookAuthor program and what I call an “enhanced e-book.” A producer can format a book exactly as a print publisher would, with strict control over typography, format, media, and interaction when displayed in landscape mode. It then allows for free-flowing text and font resizing in portrait mode. The product, however, can only be read on an iBook platform - iMac, iPad, and iPhone. In addition, if you plan to sell the enhanced product, it can only be sold through iTunes. Given that the software and its processing back end is available for free, I cannot fault Apple for wanting to control sales to recoup its investment, but limiting a product to a single sales channel is somewhat self-defeating.

Smashwords takes a broader approach to distribution by acting as a distributor to an ever-growing array of retailers, including iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Nook, Sony, and the new subscription services. At the same time, the product is the low-end epub format - less restrictive than Amazon’s mobi file but no more of a platform for producing a quality artistic product.

In the push to gain market share and become key players in the e-book marketplace, companies have taken fairly short-sighted approaches to the e-book product itself. At the same time, production and delivery capabilities have improved - further facilitating the proliferation of a sellable but substandard product that fails to satisfy what e-book readers are seeking.

Apple has shown that a quality artistic e-book is technically possible given the current state of technology. Smashwords has shown that expanding distribution is a viable business model. Amazon has shown that large volumes of sales are possible. Yet none of these major players get it right - at least for now.

The questions facing the e-book community are daunting. How can we make e-books ubiquitous without destroying the artistic quality of a book users still demand? How can we expand distribution opportunities to facilitate readers’ buying patterns and make e-reader devices capable over a broad spectrum of product offerings? How can we avoid domination by a single player, thus destroying competition and innovation?

Graphic design/desktop publishing is no longer the ugly ducking it once was - professionals embraced the technology and an entire industry was rejuvenated. Your middle school newsletter may still look like it was created by middle school students - go figure - but the design industry was taken back and improved upon by professionals armed with the new technology.

As writers and publishers, we need to demand that same dynamic. We need to demand that e-books become a quality artistic product, not just a free-flow of ugly text. The book as an art form can survive in an electronic world. We have to demand it, and show our readers we understand they are dissatisfied with the current product. It can happen.

......

Shin, D-H. (2010). Understanding e-book users: Uses and gratification expectancy model New Media and Society. Retrieved from http://nms.sagepub.com/content/13/2/260

Free copy - As Angels Weep, v2

The SMASHWORDS sale is over, and because of the late posting I had only a week of the month-long sale to put the new Juno Letters book - As Angels Weep - out for review. So I have decided to offer an ebook version for the months of August on my website and through this blog as I do the final revisions and edits.

If you are interested, go to: As Angels Weep - Bookcard and simply follow the directions.

The ebook is available in all popular formats - but only through August.

Book 5 is in full swing and I am developing a whole new spate of characters I think you will enjoy, as well as a twisting plot. You can read a teaser of The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh at this link.

Good reading this summer!

As Angels Weep - at SMASHWORDS

"As Angels Weep" is now available at SMASHWORDS in all popular ebook formats. It will be FREE as a part of the SMASHWORDS SUMMER-WINTER SALE (don't ask my what the name is about - I never could figure it out) until July 31. The Print-on-Demand version through CreateSpace is in review, and barring any missteps on my part should be ready in a few days.

Finally publishing a new novel is one of the great joys of writing. It takes over four months to create one of these masterpieces (my review - might not be supported by peer review). I will be passing the completed manuscript to California Times Publishing next week for inclusion in the Amazon catalog.

In the meantime, Kindle users can download a version for their reader from SMASHWORDS, as well as iBook users (the epub version). The enhanced iBook version will be ready by the end of August.

For you audiobook fanatics - my most favorite readers - Gary Regal has promised me he can start working on "As Angels Weep" right after school starts.

In the meantime, I have started Book 5 of The Juno Letters series - The Scavengers of Graveny Marsh. You can read a teaser online at THIS LINK.

A quick note ...

I have finally completed "As Angels Weep" - book 4 of The Juno Letters series. Now the task of publishing rears its ugly head ... or spine, depending on your preference of format. Look for an announcement of the published product by the end of the month.

I have begun to write Book 5, and have outlined a basic story. The tentative title is "The Scavengers" (aka, The Market Lady). There has always been a lot of speculation that General George Patton was assassinated - conspiracy theorists love that one. But did you know there was a plot to assassinate him right before D-Day? No? Can't find it in the history books? Maybe because you will only find it here, at The Juno Letters! More to come.

Wish I Was Here - a film by Zach Braff

The Indie movement needs to support its own, and we have a great opportunity to send a clear message to the status quo in the movie industry. Zach Braff has produced and directed a crowd-funded movie called "Wish I Was Here" - a comedy drama. In the great tradition of Star Wars, Jaws, and Star Trek the studio executives rejected the movie. It took a crowd-funding effort to raise the $2M to begin the project - a feat accomplished in only 48 hours.

Regardless of its eventual commercial success, "Wish I Was Here" sends a message to the film and publishing establishments - your business models are broken. The power is shifting to the creative people, and you'd better change or ... . Well, maybe that's a little too "social media" but you get the point.

Go see it when it hits the move theaters and celebrate a victory of Indie over The Black Death. (I may have had too much coffee this morning.)

More information online at: Wish I Was Here

Meet Three Angels - As Angels Weep

Book 4 of The Juno Letters series is "As Angels Weep" - inspired by this photograph taken in the 1930s. It is the story of the Kindertransport - the effort by people of conscience throughout Europe who worked to save its children:

Throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, amidst tyranny and terror, common people gathered around their kitchen tables and plotted treason. It was a crime against the state to save a life.

"As Angels Weep" is the story of just three of the survivors hidden during the Holocaust by these quiet heroes. They remain mostly anonymous. We can never know how many there were. We can never know their names. We must be content to know they existed, and stood against a great evil ... alone and resolute.

I used these three girls as the heroines of the story - and their picture gave me inspiration through the tough times, fighting writer's block, juggling story pieces, thinking "why am I doing this?" and finally finishing the first draft, and going into editing.

Look for "As Angels Weep" - Book 4 of The Juno Letters in August.

---

Interested in trying an AUDIO Book? A limited number of free audio book coupons for The Juno Letters - Book 1 and Cross of Fire - Book 2 are available from AUDIOBOOKS.COM, an Amazon company ... email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com for information and the FREE COUPON.

D-Day 70 years ago

Seventy years ago today in the greatest amphibious assault in history the forces of freedom stormed the beaches of Normandy to liberate western Europe. As a student of history, I studied D-Day from nearly every angle, but nothing prepared me for what I felt as I dug my hands into the sands of Omaha and Juno beaches, and peered over the cliffs at Point du Hoc. I stood in the German command bunker overlooking the approaches to Courseulles harbor and imagined what the young German officer in charge would have seen - staring into the face of a sea of ships.

Men died on the beaches, in the flooded fields, and in the hedgerows. French civilians died in the bombardments, from the shells of tanks, the assault of infantry. By the end of the day, Allied forces carved out a thin foothold on the continent. The communes at Courseulles and Berniers were among the first to be liberated. The film of the Canadians landing at Berniers is one of the iconic images of this, the longest day.

I wrote The Juno Letters to commemorate the sacrifices of all who faced that terrible morning. It is a small effort, insignificant in the scheme of things. When I think of what these men faced, I am humbled beyond words.

I had planned to be there today, but one of my foster boys graduates from high school today. I have to be content to know that The Juno Letters books are there in the museum bookstore, and my heart is standing with all those who served on the beaches in spirit.

God bless you.

The Story Draft

How do you write?

On Linkedin there are several writers' groups that share ideas regularly. One of the ongoing discussions is about methodology - how writers craft a story, whether they write to a conclusion or let the conclusion flow from the creative aspect. As you can imagine, there are many different styles. Some are notorious outliners, and plan every detail before they begin. Others rely on more fluid process, and let the story "talk to them."

I am definitely a free-writer - thanks to a class I took years ago at Evergreen College from Peter Elbow, one of the country's sage authors and professors of writing. I write in what I call "snippets" - disconnected pieces of stories within a general theme. And the word "general" is used very loosely.

But you cannot write a novel this way. At some point you have to begin the process of assembling all these ideas and fitting them together. This is where I use my "Story Draft." The Story Draft is a spreadsheet that serves as an outline that I make when I have completed about 2/3 of the initial writing - but it is much more than that.

Each of my snippets is numbered by chapter and section, and the spreadsheet lists the number of words in each. In "As Angels Weep" - book 4 of The Juno Letters - I have five parallel stories that follow the lives of three girls who have escaped from Berlin, a Gestapo captain consumed with finding them, and the investigator seeking to locate the girls as women in the present day. Each of these separate stories were included in a single chapter initially and written pretty much from start to finish - by sections. The completed book, however, would be difficult to follow that way. That is where the number comes into play.

My story draft comes together when I take my snippet listings and rearrange them in the logical sections and breaks which become the final chapters. The numbering lets me easily find them in the initial manuscript and allows me to move sections around easily - renumbering as I go. The word numbering allows me to keep the groups of sections balanced so I don't inadvertently skew the narrative one way or another. I also color code certain relevant sub-ideas so I can make summaries of such things as sections primarily dialog, narrative, girl 1 story, back story, etc. I can tell at a glance where I have to make improvements.

When the first story draft is completed, I print the document and do editing manually - often moving sections around. It is very easy to simply make a note - "Insert 10.3 before 12.6" - for example. It also shows me where I need to cut or add narrative to achieve the balance I am after.

I am about halfway through the story draft of "As Angels Weep" and discovered that I have overwritten one girl's story and left out some important parts of the "back story" - the present day narrative. The spreadsheet view shows these anomalies clearly.

Historical Fiction - Finding Stories With the Story

History is the story of mankind - the dynamics of the lives of all people, big and small. The author of historical fiction writes against a background of known facts, timelines, people, and places yet somehow must find that unique story, that untold perspective that keeps readers engaged. For many, the historical novel is the only history they have ever read since leaving school.

Our writing shapes their views of current events, modifies their understanding of the past, and shapes their reactions to events yet to come. That reality brings with it an intellectual challenge - how to be true to history yet write a story that is purely fiction. I resolve that dilemma by following two rules:

RULE 1 - Do your homework. The setting of my novels are meticulously researched. I document my background story as if I were writing a thesis for submission for my doctorate degree. I even include citations where necessary.

RULE 2 - Find a story within the story and make it your own. I search out small stories of people and places that are generally known but for which little detailed documentation exists. I then insert my characters as actors within that story. The result is a blending of fact and fiction that at times can confound even hard core historians.

Here is an example from Chapter 12 of The Juno Letters, Book 1 of my series of the same name. You can download the actual story at the links below.

The German civilian construction organization Todt built the Atlantik Wall - the line of fortifications that stretched from Norway to Spain to keep the Allies out of Fortress Europe in 1944. A member of a French resistance cell posed as a painter and bid on a wallpapering job at Todt headquarters in Caen and stole a map of the fortifications. The map was passed to a high level French resistance operative known as Colonel Remy. It was then smuggled by boat out of a tiny port called Pont-Aven on the Brittany coast. All this is generally well known (although this is one of two versions of the event - the more interesting one).

I place my main character, Antoine Bouchard, in Pont-Aven. He then becomes the person that smuggles Remy to England, and initiates a chain of events that leads to his fateful role in the invasion of Juno Beach on D-Day - all fiction ... but entirely plausible.

Anyone checking my facts will find it hard to determine where the line between fact and fiction lies, and therein lies the key to a good story. That credibility makes my story’s D-Day climax - another story within the story - all the more realistic.

I always tell my readers that the basic elements of my novels are fiction, but I know from their feedback they don’t believe me. That is perhaps the best review of all. Good writing.

You can read this story within the story - Chapter 12, The Juno Letters; junoletters.com by downloading a free copy just for reading this post at: junoletters.com/bookcard.php

The Kindle version is published by California Times Publishing and available through Amazon. All other versions are available at junoletters.com/bookshelf.php including paperback and audio.

#writers #L.W. Hewitt #historical fiction #how to #story within a story

Signing with a Publishing Company

TodToday I signed a contract with California Times Publishing, a new book publishing company that supports the independent writing community. Like many writers, I lose a lot of creative time when I have to promote my books, so it is helpful to partner with others to achieve our mutual goals. Sure, you give up some degree of control, but no venture is ever successful doing everything by oneself. I look forward to seeing how this works out. Another chapter, another set of good stories, another adventure. What a job!

Writing like any other work is ... work

I just finished publishing The Clan of the Black Sun - book 3 of The Juno Letters. It seemed a good time to reflect on the story and the versions of the print and e-books, especially since my audio producer, Gary Regal, just finished the audiobook of The Juno Letters - Book 1. Let's face it - e-books are just plain **** ugly. They appear like one long text message. It is difficult to put much formatting in one - I struggled to get the block quote of the letters and journals working for a long time. You cannot control the line spacing very well, and mixing things such as first line indents and flush lefts are trouble. I have a template now that allows me to safely do the three formatting things I need to tell the story, but I dare not change any of it. Every time I produce a book, I cross my fingers and pray to the SMASHWORDS gods. I still cannot get the Table of Contents to work right in Kindle and ePub. But they work well enough - given the state of the eBook world. I decided I could still create a beautiful book in print, so I redid the format of my books on CreateSpace. I use Trajan Pro for the headings, the same font I use in the covers, and a more readable text font. I have far more control over the layout, and get to use 'fleurons' - those curlycues and flower-like objects used as separators. The result is wonderful. Like I have written many times, a book SHOULD BE a work of art in form as well as writing. Apple make a program called iBooks Author that allows a writer to create an enhanced e-book using discrete formatting - plus a host of embedded gizmos - available only in landscape mode. In portrait mode it flows like an ebook - the best of both ... almost. The templates for the program are not well formatted for novels. I struggled with this for a log time, and gave up last summer. But I took another look - determined to create a solution. I jury-rigged a template to work in both portrait and landscape, and still produce the correct TOC. The result is an enhanced iBook version of the entire series on iTunes, and I am pleased how they turned out. There are some improvements I can make, I am certain, but compared to the average ePub, it is a work of art. Changes to iTunesConnect have made it easier to publish despite a couple of bugs I discovered and reported (it's a curse), but it still takes way too long for the books to go live. Such is the fun of being on the cutting edge of a new media revolution. Check out the iBooks version when they finally go live - available only on an iMac, iPad, and iPhone (probably iPod too). It is the closest thing to holding a real book you will find in e-format. If you have any other version of one of my books (not including NOCK, sorry) just email me and I'll send you the enhanced ibook version for free. I have reformatted all of the versions with some minor format improvements, and will replace any kindle or epub files as well. Email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com

Ascendency of Digital Publishing

Digital publishing has risen to seriously affect the traditional print market. Tradition print is dominated by a select few publishers who exercise undue influence over who gets published, how long titles remain in print, and royalties. That world is beginning to crumble. Harlequin Romance novels are published by Torstar, a holding company. That division saw a considerable loss of profits last year. If you want to read a very boring corporate financial report that details this, go to http://www.torstar.com/images/file/2013/2013MDA%20030414%20final%20v2.pdf For a quick synopsis, I quote: "... a number of digital-only publishers and other digital distribution models are emerging and authors have greater opportunities to self-publish, often at lower prices than traditional publishers. The proliferation of less expensive, and free, self-published works could negatively impact [sic - the corrrect word is 'affect'] Harlequin's revenues in the future." (see link, p. 36) Read Mark Coker's summary analysis on his blog as SMASHWORDS:http://blog.smashwords.com "10 Reasons Indie Authors Will Capture 50% of the Ebook Market by 2020" Cheers

Juno Letters featured on "Fly High"

Fly High is a blog from Rome, Italy about art, literature, and movies published by Maria Garza. She featured The Juno Letters in her most recent interview ... take a look at BRINGING THE PAST BACK TO LIFE - AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LARRY HEWITT, THE JUNO LETTERS SERIES.

Book 3 - Clan of the Black Sun will be published this week! Hooray! I will post a link to the Prerelease Edition when it is ready - probably Friday. You will have a period of time to download a free copy - you can email me with all my typos! (I have been editing for 3 weeks - there'd better not be any)

Trouble in River City (it's raiing here again ... we flood) etc.

I have a knack for getting into trouble - what I prefer to call "issues." I spent several weeks trying to get information on a license for the music to "Somewhere in Time" to include it on my video. The music industry, despite iTunes, is still mired in antiquated ways of doing business. If anyone had the cash, you could reinvent commercial access rights in an iTunes format and destroy the existing multi-tiered and inefficient commercial music industry - worth billions. A thought for another day ...

I gave up and posted it. Guess what? They found me ... real quick(ly). Pretty funny. The video now is without the soundtrack, but I have 10 (yes, 10) different brokers, agents, and 'consultants' all asking me what my budget for the music is. NOT 'it'll cost you $XXX for that' but how much I can spend.

Imagine going to the Wal-Mart and when you go to check out, they say "How much can you give us".

We'll see how this plays out. In the meantime, the second draft of Clan of the Black Sun (notice the title change) is completed, and the fun part starts - rereading until my eyes drop out of my head.

Music video for Book 3 - The Black Sun at YouTube

Ariéle Farewell is the music video for the ending of book 3 of The Juno Letters - The Black Sun. I am about a month away from publishing, but I wanted to give you a sneak preview. If you have not read books 1 or 2, Ariéle is the main character whose life journey is the background for The Juno Letters. A child when the saga starts, she ends the series by saying goodbye to her love, Richard Soullant who has passed away decades back, and meets her long-lost friend, Lanval, now that they are both in their final years.

I hope you like it. It is to the theme music of "Somewhere in Time" by John Barry (used under Creative Common license). See junoletters.com/movie for credits.

Holes ... part trois

In a fit of writing fury, I wrote the entire attack/retreat/escape scene today - 20+ pages. It actually turned out great for a rough draft.

However, Captain Charest was written into the attack scene in Muizon - 90 minutes away from Paris. The ending has him at the chateau and being killed there, as all really bad guys should be. So ... I simply tracked back through the story and eliminated his participation in the Muizon raid. After all, Les Police Nacionale's jurisdiction is the major French cities - not the countryside, sort of.

Never write anything cut in stone until you are done, finis! Like Steve Jobs said, if you are not willing to kill your cash cow, someone else will ... or something like that.

Lanval, the wanna-be boyfriend in the very sweet and innocent love triangle, is at police HQ, not at the chateau where he is the only who actually kills Charest. So, I wrote in a small scene where he overhears Charest (in Paris ... good thing I changed that) say he is kidnapping the lovely Ariele. He then finds where the maquis will meet before the attack and braves being killed himself to warn his rival, Richard. Brave guy ... he becomes in the eyes of Ariele the man he wants her to know. Important for the ending!

That leaves the venerable Paris security forces garrison. They need to be gone, but NOT at Muizon, one of the deceptions. I reverted back to Book 2's story and have them raiding the transport company (read the book!) to get them out of the way, leaving room for the maquis to attack ... EXCEPT, Charest leads the police force instead into the fray ... SO I wrote a scene where the communist maquis called the FTP ( a real group) join the attack to balance out the numbers and ensure they get guns and ammunition from the armory ... which is NOT the objective of Richard's attack.

Confused? Good. The point is, all these details can be changed as long as you have the courage in your own work to write an ending that makes no sense - then make it make sense. And then edit like crazy!

Read the book - it all makes sense now (I hope).

The value of a snippet in digging out of a hole

I have said a few times that I write in 'snippets'- small sections of a story that fit into the general idea but do not necessarily connect either in front (going forward) or from behind. Often, I free-write ideas and collect an entire folder of them just to see what sticks. I often write a snippet as a means of climbing out of one of my infamous story holes.

Here it is, again: 'He' goes for his gun, at that very moment there is an explosion, knocking him senseless. So 'she' fires twice at him ... where did 'she' get the gun? Then you realize that 'he' is supposed to be 90 miles away at the other attack site. When the young man who dreams only of her bursts into the room to save her ... 'the other he (him?)' is supposed to be at the police communications room 10 blocks away.

The first thing I did was write the scene - independently; meaning, not connected fore or aft to anything, yet. Captain Charest (the evil Captain Charest) charges into Colonel Reiniger's office and shoots him (a long story, from Book 2); Mme Bourait and Ariéle are in the office, and he turns, planning to shoot Mme Bourait and kidnap the beautiful Ariéle. The explosion - the resistance needs to blow up the communications capability of the chateau (district German HQ), so I simply move the comm office from the first floor (the open German HQ) to the secure second floor - offices of the Colonel and the 'Grand Foyer' - also from book 2. This gives me a good reason to have an explosion at the right moment.

The explosion knocks Ariéle and Mme Bourait down, and disables Captain Charest. Ariéle grabs the dead colonel's gun, laying on the floor.

Richard barges in (who is Richard? - gotta read the story), collects the dazed Mme Bourait, The Black Sun, and readies them to leave by the back door when ... Charest gets up and is going to shoot Richard, so Ariéle shoots him (not dead - important).

Lanval meets the desperate Charest in the hall (again, gotta read the story), and Charest thinks he is there to help him. He is going to shoot Richard by barging through the hallway back door into the garage, but Lanval (Police Corporal Lanval Morisot) kills him, unbeknownst to Richard or Ariéle, or obviously to the surprise of Captain Charest.

Whew! Problem is ... some of these players are NOT really in the chateau according to the story as it is written... more of the solution tomorrow.

Deconstructing a story

One of the few things guaranteed to fuel a sleepless night is a hole in a story. I am almost there, 3/4s away from finishing the first draft (brillilant, of course), the final dramatic scene clearly in mind. 'He' goes for his gun, at that very moment there is an explosion, knocking him senseless. So 'she' fires twice at him ... where did 'she' get the gun? Then you realize that 'he' is supposed to be 90 miles away at the other attack site. When the young man who dreams only of her bursts into the room to save her ... 'the other he (him?)' is supposed to be at the police communications room 10 blocks away.

This just happened to me, and I spent all last night tossing and turning - my wife will attest to it! My story had a hole and I plunged headlong into it.

I write in fits of brilliant inspiration. That's what I like to call it, anyway. I am an advocate of "free writing" then assembling and editing to put a story together. That style suites me better than outlining a story to the Nth degree first. But it leads me to these holes, and I have created some unique solutions to climbing back out.

Rather than bore you with a long-winded rant, I am going to publish a series of "holes" I created for myself in writing "The Black Sun" and discuss how I worked my way out of them. The first one will be my action scene above, but there are a lot of them in this book, and the manner and discipline needed to rectify the problem makes for some serious book editing illustrations - I hope these will be of help to others.

Next blog: How I get 'him' to the chateau, how 'she' gets a gun, and how 'the other him' can be in two places at the same time.

Audio books - a new adventure

I recently added an audio book version of NOCK on Wood to my catalog. This was my first foray into this new medium. My narrator, Gary Regal, is an experienced audiobook producer, and he did a great job on NOCK. Now we are working on The Juno Letters - Book 1. What this really means is he is working, and I am pronouncing the French for him when he has a question. I have the easier job.

I used a dialog form I first saw in the novel Shogun where Japanese dialog was slowly worked into the novel as the main character learned how to speak the language. By the time you finished, you actually had a rudimentary command of basic Japanese. Very clever. I used something similar in Juno - a French phrase in dialog, followed by the English. I think it works great in print.

But maybe not so great in audio. I found some other things that needed a different approach as well. It helps to be working with someone like Gary who has been through this.

I am sure you will like the finished product. Audible.com (ACX) is an Amazon company, and they make it very easy to switch between e-book and audio. I hope you will take a look at their catalog and try it out.

L.W. Hewitt The Juno Letters

Twitter is now closed

I have had ongoing issues with my Twitter account being hacked. I just deactivated the account - I cannot afford to have people all over the world think I am the source of spyware, viruses, porn links, and other misleading messages.

Too bad. I have had a great deal of success driving visitors to my site at The Juno Letters. It has allowed me to connect with people worldwide that share similar interests.

I spent 30 years in technology, and much of that time designing secure Internet sites. I don't understand why this service is so vulnerable, but there you go ...

I will be exploring other social media options in the near future ... for now you can contact me directly at my regular email address - larryh@hewittmbm.com.

Thanks for listening ...

L.W. Hewitt

On falling in love

When I was a young man, I fell in love a lot. On six month cycles, it seemed. I enjoyed falling in love, no matter how many times it took. It was not until I reached about 30 - the time when boys finally begin to percolate enough to grow up and become men - that I fell in love for real. I have been married to my love for over 33 magical years.

Now I am falling in love all over again - with my characters. These people have become part of my family. I cry when I write sad things about them, or in their moments of catharsis and closure. I cannot read my own work aloud with choking up in the emotional parts.

I see them when I travel: Marianne, who I remember most in the bakery in Pont-Aven, but also feel her suffering at the gates of Natzweiler; the irascible Antoine, stuffing Marcel Gireau and his family into the lockers of his boat and bluffing his way past the harbor master; the red-haired beauty, Josette, who gave me the now famous gold-plated ring on the lovers’ lock bridge; the sad Gela who finally could tell her story and find peace.

There is little Nia, holding onto her cherished hair brush for dear life; and of course, my favorite, Ariéle - a vulnerable young child, a fierce young woman, and finally a wise matriarch of a very unusual family.

They represent the best in what I see in the world - strength, competence, and hope. I love writing about them.

This has to be the best job in the world.

L.W. Hewitt The Juno Letters

A New Year ... and new challenges

I have enjoyed the start of this year. We have foster boys - teenagers (5 of them, I think) - and their odd comings and goings give me a chance to write in some great places. I spent several hours working on The Black Sun while at the White Pass ski lodge - a little duality going on there, which is appropriate to the story. Monday I spent several hours riding the Seattle-Bremerton ferry Hyak - something I used to do when in college back when they had to use oars to move the ferries. It's not quite as easy, because they make you get off the boat at each end now - back in the 70s you could just plop down with a typewriter (yes, Virginia, an actual Smith-Corona) and work away all day. Take a hint, WSDOT.

My schedule is starting to get back to normal, however, and I curled up next to the woodstove in my Oly Club office yesterday for the first time in a while. I am about half-way through The Black Sun, looking for ways to make it darker, and thinking about my marketing strategy for this upcoming year.

I am determined to figure out Facebook. I get an email that says "You Have Notifications" - whatever happened to "You have Mail?". When I click - nothing. And since when was "Like" a verb? Mind you, I am not a tech-ignorant fob. I spent most of my adult life running a technology company, and did some great and cutting edge things. But I must admit I don't get social media.

I remember when being a twit was NOT a good thing. Bear with me ... .