What do bestselling writers like to read?

Writers are inspired and informed by authors they’ve read. I asked some best-selling authors what they like to read most. This week, I’ve asked two very different authors for their opinions.

Best-selling Toby Neal is author of the Lei Crime series, set in her home state of Hawai’i; Russell Blake writes thrillers from his home in Mexico.

Name three characteristics of books that you like. What makes you keep reading a book? What are some books that you weren't able to put down until you finished them?

Toby Neal: 

I love a book with vivid characters in interesting situations most of all. I'm a voracious reader and read a variety of genres: mystery/suspense, romance, literary, memoir, sci-fi...First and foremost, the characters have to be three-dimensional and capture my interest. I also like original imagery and word choice "shaking his hand felt like grabbing a gel-filled surgical glove" is an image I remember from a new book I'm blurbing for mystery writer Thomas Matthews. Original! Memorable!  I like writing that feels confident, fresh, fast moving with a deeper message behind the outward action — and I write the kinds of books I enjoy reading.

Things I hate: 

•     clichés
•     formulaic plots
•     overdescription and qualifiers: "she gasped, wailed, screeched"
•     wandering narrative — I want to be anchored in each scene with sensory cues. New writers often launch into long dialogues that then float, unanchored, and we lose the setting 
•     self-conscious wannabe sophistication, like no punctuation (literary can be very annoying to me).

In short, if a book has dynamic characters and solid writing, I'll read it and probably review it too!

Russell Blake: 

In fiction, I'd have to say that I look for different things depending upon my mood. When I'm in the mood for a mystery/thriller, I look for a combination of pace, plot and prose. If the pace is fast and the plot engaging I'm hooked, but if the prose does more than simply move me along, I'll be recommending the book to my friends.

I think the last book I couldn't put down was one of James Lee Burke’s — Last Car to Elysian Fields, I believe. Before that, Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. Although these are very different styles, I found them both fully engaging and finished them within a few days.

When I'm in the mood for literary fiction, it's all about the prose. A great example of what I'm into would be Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk — quirky, unusual, but brilliant prose. Frankly, I have so little time to read these days, with my publishing schedule, I'm unlikely to have enough time to read an entire book without putting it down. But those were books I put everything aside to finish.

Do you consciously try to emulate these books? If so, what form does that take: plot, structure, characters, settings, author's voice and word choice?

Russell Blake: 

Good lord, no. There's no way I could come close to James Lee Burke’s word choice or author voice, although I aspire to at least get in the same ballpark. I'd say that I tend to ignore other authors once I sit down to write — I try to learn while I'm reading, and then forget the specifics, allowing their prose to color my perception without creating something I follow.

I don't like to deconstruct when I'm reading, and the only way I could see myself emulating with any accuracy would be if I read, deconstructed, and then deliberately set out to use what I'd analyzed, which would take all the joy out of writing for me.

Toby Neal: 

I've written ten books and a memoir. Seven of them are published with great reviews. I don't need to emulate anyone anymore, but when I started out in crime mystery/police procedural, I was emulating my "idols" Michael Connelly and Lisa Gardner and tried to "show not tell" virtually everything. My first book, Blood Orchids, is much choppier and more gritty in writing style than later works, where I found my "comfort zone" of a more descriptive style and less bad language and gritty violence. I prefer a more PG-13 level of violence, and my readers like that, too. I've also developed a series that's unique in the police procedural genre, which features a protagonist who starts out very damaged from child sexual abuse, gradually improves and recovers over the course of six books, and grows through a subplot love story that readers are crazy about!

Most of my early author idols’ protagonists remain fairly static, and that’s come to bore me as a reader. I eventually abandoned Stephanie Plum and Sue Grafton because the main character never changed. That frustrated me — perhaps because of my background as a mental health therapist, I want my characters to learn and grow over the course of the book(s). I hear repeatedly from readers that get hooked on my books that they like that, too.

Do you try to avoid any of the techniques or conventions followed by your favourite writers?

Toby Neal: 

I try to avoid being clichéd and formulaic (see above annoyance list) and if my favourite writers devolve into that zone, than yes, I not only stop letting them influence me, I stop reading them. For instance, I’m not reading Patricia Cornwell anymore because I feel like she’s obsessed with detail and her books have slowed down too much for me. I can take a class in forensics if that’s what I want, rather than reading that for pleasure!

I've become much more confident in my own voice and vision, and while I read a lot (as I said above) I try to expand my own repertoire by reading all kinds of things, including nonfiction that can inform my plots. One new "indie" mystery writer I really respect is Gae Lynn Woods. I wait for her books, and they inevitably are more gruesome and twisty than mine, with Texas local color — and I love the nested mysteries and distinctive characters she does. I also really respect Gillian Flynn for her truly original plots — but I hate her characters! All of them! And yet, they’re so bizarre and captivating I can’t stop reading. Now that’s a good book, that keeps you reading even when you want to stop.

Russell Blake: 

Every author I really like tends to have something intriguing in their use of language, but I don't think they follow specific conventions. None I'm able to deduce, at any rate. The hallmark of an effective author is the ability to mind-meld with the reader and transport them along, to put them in the same place as the characters, make them hear, see, smell, touch the world you've created. So beyond trying to do so, I can't say as I consciously avoid or advocate any one thing beyond clear communication while creating beautiful sentences.

What rules of writing do you intentionally break? 

Toby Neal: 

Point of view is my favourite area to surprise and bend the rules on readers.

I try to push out with new combinations of POV in every book. Lei Crime #6, Shattered Palms, coming out in March, is the first book I've written with only one, third-person POV.

My most innovative featured an investigator in third-person past tense, and a bad guy POV in first-person present tense. It made for a sometimes jarring reading experience, and I wanted readers to be uncomfortable — I was writing about sex trafficking and sadism, without a lot of gruesomeness. I wanted the reader to be in the head of a sociopath and see their way of seeing the world. It was challenging, but I think I pulled it off in Black Jasmine.

Russell Blake: 

Well, I don't believe that there are many actual rules, more like author preferences that have been laid out as rules by the dogmatic. In that regard, I don't much care about the proscription against adverbs in dialogue tags, nor am I afraid to open with the weather, nor do I particularly fear overwriting. So I guess you could say that while I know all the rules, I break or abide by them as the story mandates rather than out of some slavish devotion.

Thank you, Toby and Russell!

Toby Neal grew up on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. After a few stretches of “exile” to pursue education, she has made the islands her home for the last fifteen years. Toby is a mental health therapist, a career that has informed the depth and complexity of the characters in her books. Outside of work and writing, Toby volunteers and enjoys life in Hawaii through outdoor activities, including beach walking, body boarding, scuba diving, photography and hiking.

Visit her website, follow her on Twitter @tobywneal, or visit her Facebook page, LeiCrimeSeries.

 A Wall Street Journal and The Times (UK) featured author, Russell Blake is the bestselling author of twenty-five books, including the thriller novels Fatal Exchange, The Geronimo Breach, The Voynich Cypher,  Zero Sum, Silver Justice, King of Swords, Upon A Pale Horse, the Assassin series, the Delphi Chronicle trilogy, the JET series, and his latest BLACK series.

Non-fiction includes the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated), a parody of all things writing-related.

Blake lives in Mexico and enjoys his dogs, fishing, boating, tequila and writing, while battling world domination by clowns.

Visit his blog, RussellBlake.com where he publishes his periodic thoughts, such as they are. Follow him on twitter @BlakeBooks.

Independent book review: Russell Blake’s Jet

If you haven’t yet heard of the force of literature named Russell Blake, crawl out from under that rock and check out his website, blog and pages on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Amazon and the other usual e-book sellers. It’s time to be brought up to speed.

Blake writes a new novel every couple of months. Notice I didn’t write “churns out”; his pace is amazing, but every work is inspired and professional. He’s not a hack, not a wannabe; he’s the real thing, living the writer’s life somewhere in Mexico.

For his current series, Jet, Russell Blake wanted to create a female James Bond-like character. His heroine, Jet, is highly trained in all the military skills; she's lethal, unstoppable and never makes a mistake. I found myself asking: do people like that really exist? But I almost immediately answered: who cares? Jet is not a deep analysis of the human condition — although there are philosophical aspects to this work. But essentially, Jet is a thrill ride as only Suspense Writer Russell Blake can do it.

Jet has all the elements readers can expect from Russell Blake: it's captivating from the first page, there's action all the way through and the pace never slows down. Bullets fly, bombs explode, Jet kicks high in a tight black leather jumpsuit. I kept imagining Milla Jovovich with long hair, even though I've never seen a Resident Evil movie.

Blake seems to know his way around some exotic locales: Trinidad, Belize, Venezuela, even Tel Aviv and Algiers.

Blake's writing chops are well evident: constant action, a good pace, and lots of details about weapons and tactics that action fans love. I had never heard of SIG guns before reading Jet. The plot is gripping, complex and complete — no plot holes or bizarre coincidences that are hallmarks of writers less skilled than Russell Blake.

Sometimes, it felt like he was showing off with his command of the language. He starts by breaking Elmore Leonard's rule — he opens with weather. It takes some skill to pull that off and keep readers reading.
At other times, it reads like Eddie Van Halen's guitar writing: fast, thrilling, but really, Russell, do you have to show off this much? Take this:

The fountain in the middle of the square, thick calcium deposits crusting the pitted centerpiece, hosted a squabble of sparrows intent on bathing in the rainwater accumulated in its base. Drawn by their raucous chirping, he slowed to watch them enjoy their brief reprieve from the oppressive heat.

Or

A pair of flying fish catapulted out of the water off the bow, keeping pace as they surfed the glistening spindrift that danced above the waves, to the steady accompanying throb of the boat's motor.

But it's almost flawless. Really, I found seven typos in the whole book. Yes, I counted.

Story:

Jet, the first book in the series, starts with Carnival in Trinidad. Maya owns a small Internet café, which seems like something hard to make a profit with in a third-world country. She's attacked by professional killers, fights back, killing the whole team, or at least all but one. She then flees the country, which sets her on a course back to her past and to figure out who's trying to kill her, and why they're going to such lengths to do it.

We quickly learn that Maya was actually an Israeli super-agent code-named Jet, part of a super-secret, super-skilled and super-effective team with similar hotshot code names like Rain, Fire, Tiger and Lightning. Some time before the action of the book starts, she had faked her own death to get out of the whole assassin trade. She wanted a quieter life, and tried to create one in a tropical backwater.

Of course, life doesn't let her settle down. It turns out that one of her targets as a Mossad assassin had a brother, a Russian multi-billionaire oil tycoon and all-round bad guy. He wants revenge and has hired a top team of assassins to kill Jet. They track her down through the only person who knows that Jet's death was phoney: her old boss and lover, David.

Apart from Jet, all the characters are three-dimensional and believable. My favourite was Dr. Rani Stein, the obese general practitioner — heart of gold, deeply flawed, terrified yet brave. I felt like I knew him, or someone very much like him.

Jet, though, is a different story. She's almost perfect, apart from her aloofness and lack of compassion for just about anyone. I guess if you want to be an unstoppable assassin, you have to be a complete bitch.

To me, Jet was not a believable character: she's too fast, too accurate a shot, too smart ... I mean, how does a single unarmed person kill six professional assassins in a matter of minutes? How can one person be so supremely good at not just planning but also executing an operation where two people eliminate a score of adversaries on their own turf? But then, no super-spy characters are believable. James Bond certainly isn't, no matter how hard actors try to make him so.

And that's not the point of this novel. Jet is a series for lovers of kick-ass action, and Jet delivers a boatload of kickass. No, she's not invulnerable: she has a couple of weak spots, which almost undo her before the book ends. So, while Jet is not believable, she is fallible; the reader can identify with her at a few places in the plot — mind you, for me, it's not when she's killing a gunman with one of those pointed receipt-holders you see on a store counter.

So, I'll give this book four stars for its airtight plot, flawless expression, non-stop action and solid characterization; I take one away because I just cannot believe in these superhuman killing machines. They make great movies, but are less satisfying on the printed page.

Once again, Russell Blake proves that the independent author can, and does, deliver a good read.

Plunging The Bones of the Earth into Kindle Select

I’ve decided to take the plunge.

Creative Commons. No, this is not me.
Thanks for asking, though.

I’ve enrolled my novel, The Bones of the Earth, into Amazon’s Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) Select program.

I’ve resisted this for some time. In fact, the first time I heard of Kindle Select, I objected to it. At the same time, though, I understood why Amazon structured it the way it did.

KDP Select is a marketing program, as well as a method for Amazon to reinforce its dominance of the digital book market. An author or a publisher who has published a book on Amazon’s Kindle store can choose to enroll it in the KDP Select program, which gets the book included in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library. This allows member of Amazon Prime to borrow the book, free of charge. The author/publisher gets a share of the fund that Amazon sets aside to reimburse them for these free book loans. Lately, that fund has been around $600,000 per month, divided among all authors in the program according to how many times their books get borrowed.

Authors can also set five days out of every 90 during which their books can be downloaded for free. Otherwise, you cannot set your book for a free download on Amazon, unless you go through some tricks by setting your book for free on other sites (like Smashwords, Apple’s iBookstore,Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Book Store, the Sony e-bookstore or Diesel, to name the few that I know of) and hoping that Amazon matches their price. This has not always worked for me.

The catch

The downside to KDP Select is that Amazon demands exclusivity. If you enroll your e-book in Select and the Lending Library, you cannot distribute it through any other retailer, paid or not. If you do, and Amazon finds out, they’ll not only refuse to pay you any royalties on that book, they may withhold your royalties on all your other title sold through Amazon. They may even bar you from the Kindle digital publishing system entirely.


Creative Commons


This exclusivity applies only the digital books. Authors and publishers that have joined Select can still sell printed books any way they wish — or can.

I can understand why Amazon did this. It dominates the e-book market, and it’s not a charity. It’s a business. I’m not a lawyer, but I doubt this qualifies as an anticompetitive tactic. No one has to join the Select program. You can still sell books through the KDP system as well as every other digital channel you can find, and Amazon will still sell your e-books for you. And Amazon still provides lots of free tools for making e-books in the first place.

A large number of authors have signed up for KDP Select, including several that I know through social media and some that have even written guest posts on this blog. Obviously, they’re not that worried about the exclusivity clause — or they feel that the benefits of lending royalties plus increased sales more than offset the downside.

Many have written that the majority of their sales have been through Amazon, anyway, so they weren’t really losing much.

For my part, Amazon accounts for about half my sales; the other half is mostly through Smashwords, with a few other sales from the other e-retailers.

Select results




Rob Guthrie's magnumopus is now out!

 Some authors have found Kindle Select works. Those were RS Guthrie’s words on his blog, Rob on Writing. “Each of the past three or four times I have run one or both of my books free on Amazon, I have seen a nice increase in sales post-freebie,” he wrote in April.
In February, author Russell Blake (who guested here in December) reported on his blog:

Last month, I dipped my toe in the water by making The Geronimo Breach free for three days. During that time, I saw about 12K downloads. Not too shabby. Then, when it went back to paid, a funny thing happened. After languishing for the first day, it shot like a rocket, finally hitting #165 in the paid Kindle store.

So, it does work. Of course, both Guthrie and Blake outsell me by orders of magnitude. But the potential is there.



At time of writing,
number 6,554 Paid in
Kindle Store  — not shabby at all.



Do I really want to give my books away for free?

Of course not. I put a lot of work into them: planning, writing, re-writing, editing, re-writing again, throwing parts out, filling in plot and characterization holes. I engaged editors and designers, and I had to pay them. So no, I don’t want to just give them away.

But we all appreciate that free promos and cut-rate special offers help drive up sales, too. Free is a promotional tool that I’d like to be able to use.

Also, there are some multi-author book giveaway promotions that I’d like to participate in — but again, you have to be a member of Kindle Select.

Mostly, I want to experience that paid sales spike after the free promos. I understand that it’s only a temporary spike. At this point, I’ll take temporary.

As of July 12, ##431,700 Paid in Kindle Store. Let's see if we can boost that to the low hundred thousands, at least.

I promise to blog about my experiences regularly. I’ll keep you all up to date on my progress.

Writing about sex

Sex (In A Book) — how much is too much?

That’s what Russell Blake, author of Geronimo Beach and other action novels, asks in his guest blog post on the World Literary Café.

When is everyone’s favourite passtime in page form too much, whatever that is? I'll admit I don't read bodice rippers or erotica, so that's not what I'm talking about. I'm asking the open question: when does spice stop being seasoning, and instead overpower the main dish in general fiction?

As you can imagine, the post sparked a debate. When you’re finished with this post, read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, a controversy has erupted in my home town, Ottawa over Sex: A Tell-All Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology.

The exhibit was designed by the Science Centre in Montreal, where it ran to great success but no controversy. It has also been shown in Regina, Saskatchewan, again without eliciting a lot of opposition.

But once it came to Ottawa—in fact, even before it opened to the public — it encountered loud opposition. The federal (Conservative) Heritage Minister, James Moore said it was “insulting” to taxpayers. In an email to the museum’s director, Moore’s assistant quoted the Minister as saying it was “inappropriate for young children.”

The Museum of Science and Technology describes the exhibit this way:

It is an award-winning educational exhibition that answers the main questions young people have about sexuality. It imparts what science has to say on the topic, conveys a positive image of sexuality and, ultimately, helps young people hone their judgment skills so they can make responsible and informed decisions.

Image courtesy CBC.ca
(Luc Robitaille/Montreal Science Centre)

I haven’t seen it, but I plan to soon. And I’ll be taking my teenage son. The vast majority of comments about it, on the Museum’s website, in the mainstream media and elsewhere, are in favour of the exhibit. There are very few opposed to it. Yet the museum caved into the pressure, removing a section on masturbation and raising the age at which children can visit without a parent from 12 to 16.

The trouble with the latter change is that children whose parents will not take them to the exhibit at age 14 are exactly the ones who need accurate, unbiased information the most.

Discouraging opposition

The opposition to the exhibit is, unfortunately, easily predictable. Before you read some of the comments I gleaned from some easily accessible websites, try to imagine what they might be.

From Peter Baklinski, commenting on the Museum’s website:

I must inform you that me and my four children will not visit the museum again while the sex exhibition is running.

The sex exhibition is a travesty to the majority of Canadians who believe that sexual activity is reserved for spouses within the context of marriage.

Thank you for telling all of us how to have sex, Peter. 

From Ken Quick on Sun Media’s web page:

Perversion masquerading as "science" and "education". Your tax dollar at work.

The only reason I give more attention to idiotic comments like Quick's is that we need to understand the full range of opinion. 

I stress that the overwhelming majority of comments on all media (except maybe for Sun Media’s website—but remember that fora like these are moderated, so the published comments do not necessarily reflect the range of comments submitted) are positive. People in Ottawa generally support the exhibit.

From Cathy Payne, who commented on the CBC’s website:

The “insult to taxpayers" argument was rejected as an "attack on freedom" when the Heritage issue was championing the sport where two men go into a cage and try to kick one another to death.

That level of violence had no opponents from the "family values" champions. But while viewing an inanimate art exhibition they see vile sex.

Well said, Ms. Payne!

Your turn to weigh in:

What do you think? How should we talk about sex? From my point of view, sex is a complete normal, and wonderful thing. However, we learned very early that we’re supposed to be embarrassed by it. It’s something kept behind closed doors, under covers — literally. “Wheresmycountry,” a commenter on CBC’s web page, put it perfectly:

The more taboo and forbidden a subject is, the more fascinating it becomes. If you want to foster increased interest about sex among curious young minds, tell them it is something they are too young to know about. Works every time!

Please readers, share your thoughts. How can we talk about sex, write about sex, teach children about it so they don’t have shame, guilt and deeper problems with it? Write whatever you want. However, I will give you one warning: I will have no hesitation in tearing apart the argument that “sex education should be left to parents.” The empirical evidence is incontrovertible: that strategy has never worked.