How do you get ideas for your stories?

Image by Amal Manikkath

Authors are often asked where we get our ideas. I get mine from fortune cookies.

Just kidding. 

I got the idea for CANALS after driving over, or next to, yet another irrigation canal in Modesto, California. One day I thought, what if there was a monster in the canals? Man, no one would be safe because those canals are everywhere. Just about everyone who lives in Modesto and has a decent arm could throw a rock into an irrigation canal from somewhere on their property.

I got the idea for THE MIGHTY T from a newspaper article about the O’Shaughnessy Dam and the Tuolumne River. That dam is still a hot topic today. Environmentalists want it torn down so the Hetch Hetchy Valley can be restored... Well, not all environmentalists. The ones in San Francisco don’t because they get their clean, pure drinking water form the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. 

I wrote DEATH OF A MATADOR after attending a Portuguese bloodless bullfight in Stevensen, California. It was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen and I thought it would made a good story.

SUNSET HILL followed MATADOR, but wasn’t inspired by anything other than the fact that Mindy got away at the end of THE MIGHTY T. She was too good a character to just let go like that.

The idea for THE KING OF ROUND VALLEY sprung from a location: the place Grant ended up at at the end of SUNSET HILL. That’s where he was so I began looking into what might be going on in Mendocino County...

Image by Vjeran Lisjak

Then, yesterday morning, I was on the treadmill at the gym listening to a podcast titled Predicting The Future, an episode from the NPR: TED Radio Hour Podcast. (You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, like I do, or download it directly from the site.) 

Because I only walked for 30 minutes, I only made it up to Marc Goodman’s section, What Does The Future Of Crime Look Like? I was particularly struck by Nina Tandon’s and Richard Resnick’s segments. Tandon’s company is growing bones from stem cells and Resnick says sequencing genes will likely change the way we live.

Now, couple this with my recent experiences in ordering a new iPhone and iPad and ... BAM! An idea for a story sprouted. At first it was a short story, but after I’ve a couple of days to play with it, it’s gonna be a novel. And I think it’s gonna be really good.

It’ll be about the way we pick our children in, oh, about a hundred years from now.

Fictional Characters and Chopping Up Chickens

I’ve always thought my novels were plot driven, but now I realize that’s not entirely true. A good story is critical, but a novel without good characters isn’t likely to be finished.

Where do fictional characters come from?

- From the author’s imagination: They’re made up.
- From the author’s experiences: They’re written after someone the author knew personally or knew of.
- A combination of the preceding two statements. Most characters probably fall into this category.

One of the scenes in my horror novel CANALS involves two Hispanics named Tony and Bobby, each a year out of high school. They met in fourth grade when Bobby, who was the biggest kid in school, bigger than any sixth grader (BIG!), saved Tony from an ass kicking. Bobby sat on the other kid until the bell rang, then shoved his face in the grass as he got up. The two were inseparable after that.

Until the monster ate one of them. You’ll have to read the book to learn who gets to live, though he was never quite the same after watching his buddy get munched.

Here’s a rather long, and explicit, excerpt from the book:

Tony spun an empty bottle toward the canal, watched it arch through the moon-lit night, heard the splash, and said, “Two-for-two, holmes. At this rate I’m going to take Kobe’s place on the Lakers, aye, ése?”

“Don’t call me ése, you wetback,” Bobby said. “You don’t even know how to speak Spanish, fool, and you damn sure can’t shoot like Kobe.” They were Lakers fans: Kobe Bryant was the man.

“Get your fat arm off the cooler, bitch,” Tony said, trying to get in the ice chest.
“Bitch hell. You ain’t got no bitch, bitch, unless you count that Wanda bitch at work.” Bobby laughed as he moved his arm and pulled a joint out of a plastic baggie. “Shit, you couldn’t even get in Wanda’s panties.”

“Shut up, ése. Wanda’s got back, man. I’m gonna get me some of that, you wait and see.”

Bobby laughed again. “You stupid wetback, I’ll have a gray beard down to my ass before you get with Wanda. Besides, she’s ugly. And don’t call me ése, bitch.”

 “Man, but could you do Yolanda?” Tony said, grabbing his crotch. “That bitch is fine!” He took a long pull from his bottle.

“Shit yeah, I could do Yolanda four times a day, bitch.” Bobby reached across the cooler and said, “Gimme five for Yolanda’s fine pussy.” Although neither boy had seen or touched Yolanda’s genitals, nor would they ever get close, they fived it across the beer cooler.

Bobby lit the joint and took a deep hit, holding in the potent smoke as long as his burning lungs allowed. He exhaled slowly, tilting his head up, blowing smoke at the stars.

“Gimme the smoke, ése,” Tony said, reaching across the cooler, tapping Bobby’s arm.
“I just got it started, fool. All I got was paper. Let me get some weed first, bitch. And don’t call me ése.”

“Bitch this, bitch,” Tony said, grabbing his crotch again and watching his friend hit on the joint. He tapped Bobby on the arm again. “Pass the joint, bitch!”

Bobby leaned away from his friend and sucked longer on the thin marijuana cigarette, just to piss Tony off. He fought off a cough; small wisps leaked from his nostrils as he finally passed the joint to Tony.

“See, bitch,” Tony said, as he took the joint and scowled. “You took too much, ése. Man, I don’t know why I share my weed with you. You’re a fat weed hog, bitch.”

Bobby coughed out his hit and took a pull from his Corona to douse the fire in his throat. Still coughing, he said, “Bitch, your weed? I bought this weed, bitch. And don’t call me ése, bitch.”

Tony considered that for a moment, then said, passing the joint back, “Oh yeah. That’s right, you did buy it. Bitch.”

They looked at each other and started laughing; a stoners’ laugh, hard and uncontrollable, so hard they fell out of their chairs into the sand where they rolled onto their backs and laughed at the moon and the stars until side cramps forced them to stop. Wiping tears from their bloodshot eyes, they righted their chairs and resumed their positions of importance on opposite sides of the cooler.

You might now ask yourself, where did I get those characters? Did I just make them up? Turns out, I didn’t. I worked with a real-life Bobby and Tony, and their repartee was very much like it was in the book. I worked with them on the loading dock of the Foster Farms poultry plant in Livingston, California. I know you’re dying to know the story, so...

If you live on the West Coast, or shop at Costco, you should be familiar with Foster Farms poultry products. Max and Verda Foster started Foster Farms in 1939, on an eighty-acre ranch near Modesto, California. Many years later, they bought poultry plants in Oregon and Washington, which is why you can find their chicken in every grocery store on the West Coast. I think their chicken is the best “grocery-store” chicken. I’ve eaten free-range and organic chicken only once or twice; they might be a better product, I don’t know. Foster Farms also raises turkeys—the fictional Bobby and Tony worked at the Foster Farms turkey processing plant in Turlock, California—and run a dairy. All-in-all, I’d buy their products over their competitors nine times out of ten.

I started working for Foster Farms the fall after high school. I had two roommates who worked for them on the night shift and their foreman was looking to put together a basketball team, and I was a decent basketball player, so I easily got the job. I didn’t even have to apply. The first time I walked into the part of the plant where I’d be working, I was blown away.

Foster Farms is not even close to being as big as, say, Tyson Foods, the largest meat processor in the world, but they’re the biggest on the West Coast. According to an article I found on the Internet (which of course has to be true), Foster Farms processes almost 600,000 chickens a day. That’s not a typo.

I walked into a room the size of a large warehouse, about four stories high. Huge. When the processing lines started up, there were about eight, I looked up and saw chickens coming down out of the sky by the hundreds. They’d already been plucked, eviscerated, and cleaned; they looked like the whole chickens you bring home from the grocery store.

The first line was called the “bag line,” and it ran fast because all they had to do was stuff a packet of innards into the cavity of the chicken and slip a bag up and around it. No, the neck and innards you pull out of the chicken you’re about to cook didn’t come from that chicken.

The line I was put on was a cut-up line (though we were too busy to be cut-ups while working): chickens were dismembered a piece at a time so that by the end of the line nothing but drumsticks were left. The first person on the line cut the left wing off every bird, the next got the right wing. Then came the breast guys. I was a breast guy. Each breast guy cut the breasts off every other chicken. Lastly, two people cut the thighs off. The drumsticks fell off on their own. The chicken parts were thrown or dropped onto big pieces of sheet metal in front and below us. The parts slid to the bottom of the sheet metal, where they could be grabbed and packed.

The cutters stood on a steel platform, about four feet high. In front and below us were the packers, who grabbed the cut-up parts and placed them on Styrofoam trays that passed by on a fast-moving conveyor belt. The drumstick guy, or gal—lots of women worked at Foster Farms—placed six drumsticks on a tray, turning them so the round side faced upward (if they had time). The next person did the same with the thighs. The breast halves were packed three to a tray and I can’t recall how many wings a tray got. Six sounds right.

And that’s how the line went, hour after hour, for eight hours minus breaks and lunch. Being a breast guy was grueling work, especially when your knives got dull, which mine always did. I never got the hang of the second cut, where you had to run the blade down the chicken’s intercostal cartilage. I’d miss most of the time so the blade would have to be pushed through bone. After a while, the blade would become dull and I’d have to push harder to cut the breast off. And the hand that held the chicken had to be covered with a mesh glove too small for my big hand so that it was killing me by lunch. You get the picture.

One funny anecdote. Funny to me, at least. I’d be hacking away at the chicken when suddenly, but thankfully rarely, a big blob of chicken fat would flick off the end of my knife, fly down and hit the woman below me in the face. A hazard of their job, I suppose. I worked at each station of the cutting line at least once but never did the packing. I’m six-four and the line was made for people five-five, or less.

Job openings were posted on a corkboard in the break room. I was tipped off about an opening in the cooler, so I applied and got the job. Anything to get off the cutting line. Cases of packaged chicken sat in the cooler until they were loaded onto delivery trucks.

The weight room sat a floor above the cooler. Styrofoam packs of chicken, or bags of whole chicken, were weighed and priced, then packed into cases. The cases slid down a track of rollers to the cooler. The whole production was coordinated, meaning the weight room processed orders that went together so we could stack the order’s cases on the same pallet, or pallets if the order was large.

It was hard backbreaking work, when you were working. The cases of whole chickens could weigh up to sixty pounds (maybe fifty—it’s been a long time). But if the weight room had a problem, no cases dropped into the cooler and we got to kick back. We’d bundle up in our company-issued jackets, nest down on a few cases of chicken, and take a snooze.

As I recall, I was recruited for my next position: lead man on the loading dock. I was promoted ahead of guys who’d worked there many years longer than I had. Looking back, it might’ve been because I had actually graduated from high school (remember, this was the night shift) or was clearly more intelligent than my co-workers (which isn’t saying much, believe me).

The loading dock’s front office would give me sheets of orders at the beginning of the night, one sheet for each truck backed into the loading dock. I’d write cases of products onto a piece of paper and hand it to one of the hand-operated forklift guys, who’d then trundle off to the cooler in search of the products. They’d come back with a load of chicken, stop in front of my station so I could make sure they had the right products and tally up the weights. Once that was done, they’d stack the product in the truck. Several aspects to my job were important: the truck had to be loaded with the right product, I had to have the weights correct, and the truck had to be loaded in the reverse order it was to be delivered. Make sense?

Tony and Bobby were forklift guys who worked out of the older cooler, located to my right as I’d sit on my stool and stare at the back of a truck. To this day I don’t where the chickens that came out of the older cooler went. They didn’t go into any of my trucks (or I’ve forgotten they did). The chickens in the old cooler were packed into waxed cardboard boxes, were smaller than the chickens I cut up on the line, and were packed with ice. My best guess is, they either went to restaurants or were shipped far away—thus the need for the ice.

I’d see Tony and Bobby almost every day, zipping in and out of the loading dock and the cooler. As their products weren’t loaded on my loading dock, the only time I’d see them is when they wanted to gab. As in their likenesses in CANALS, they were U.S.-born Mexicans. Or Americans of Mexican heritage. Whatever term is more politically correct these days. CANALS’s Bobby-and-Tony banter was as I remembered the real Bobby and Tony, except they weren’t stoned. I take that back. They usually weren’t stoned. They were fun guys, always joking, rarely down or depressed.

Sadly, I learned years later that Bobby was killed in a car accident while driving to Los Banos on fog-shrouded roads: very dangerous in the winter. His car flipped, he was ejected, and ended up with his head submerged in a ditch. He drown.

Hmm... I may have just tipped you off as to which dies in CANALS. Oh well, you should read the book anyway. If you don’t mind being scared.

Figuring Plot Details

I'm working on my third Grant Starr novel, with a working title "Sunset Hill," which is in the northeast corner of Seattle, Washington. Grant is based in Modesto, CA, about a two-day drive. Well, maybe one day in the Ferrari. Right off the bat I bet you can see the problem: how do I get Grant involved in a case two states away? He's not some fed.

I ran through several scenarios before I hit on what I think works the best. First I thought he and Amber could be up there on a vacation. But there were several problems with that. One, that's what they were doing when "Death of a Matador" opened. They were in the Mount Shasta area of Northern California, at a B&B. Don't want to be redundant. Also, Bensen has to be in the book and I'm going to write him in as a tag-along on Grant and Amber's vacation. Although he's been curious about Grant and Amber's sex life, him being the married man and all, I don't think he'd go for being the third wheel. So I scratched that idea.

Then I thought, what if Seattle has a case similar to what Grant battled in "The Mighty T" and called him up to help. I saw a bookish detective on the case in Seattle, a guy who remembers everything. He read about the case of the terrorist Samuel Raimes III, who called himself John Lightfoot, and thought his case was so similar that Grant could surely help them. The problem with that scenario was, bah! It was a little boring and, if I may say, pretentious. Maybe if Seattle was dealing with an eco-terrorist like Raimes, but they're not. Plus, Grant would likely have to go to Seattle alone, and we couldn't have that.

Next I thought Grant, Amber, and Bensen could be in Seattle attending some kind of cop conference. I had to consult Google to see if cops had conferences like that and guess what? Not only do they, they had one in Seattle in 2012. I like realism. So, Grant, Amber, and Bensen are at the conference. I'm still thinking about letting Hanks tag along, to make it an even number so Bensen would have someone to share a room with. I still might do that. I liked Hanks limited role in Matador.

I'm almost finished writing chapter one and I'm having a little trouble figuring out a believeable way to get Grant together with the Seattle detective who's caught the murder case we're interested in, Ira Utter. Utter's not an expert at anything so I couldn't have him speaking at the conference. For that matter, Grant's not really an expert at anything, either, wo why would he be speaking?

Ah, but he has had experience in tracking down an eco-terrorist, and not many cops can say that. So, I'm gonna have him take 5-10 minutes of someone else's presentation on "Home-Grown Terrorism" and Utter's gonna be sitting in. But Utter's busy on a new case, why would he take time out to attend a boring conference, especially one meant only for "police executives"? He's there because his captain, Captain Marks, is giving the presentation and she told him he had to go so there'd be at least one person laughing at her jokes. Grant's gonna say something at the end of his breif talk that's gonna catch Utter's ear.

As I've posted about before, I don't want anyone to be able to point out big holes in my plots. I also don't want anyone saying "Hey! That couldn't happen!" So I labor at getting my plots to make sense and keep both feel planted in the real world.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings.

Finished first draft of next Grant Starr thriller

No one does the happy dance better than Snoopy!

I finally finished the first draft of my next Grant Starr thriller. I wish I could tell you its title, but I don't know what it is. I began writing this book in April of 2011 and had planned on publishing it in the fall of 2011. Unfortunately, life happened and other things became more important than finishing a novel.

I was tempted to ditch the project for personal reasons, but thought it had merit and deserved to be fleshed out. It weighed in at about 45K words when I set it on the shelf last June and comes in at 131K as a first draft. CANALS ended up at 140K and the THE MIGHTY T at about 100K. I have to admit it was very difficult to complete. I have a great idea for the third Grant Starr thriller, so good it was difficult to ignore its pleas to be written.

This book begins and ends at a "bloodless" Portuguese bullfight, held in a small town about thirty miles from me. They're called bloodless because the bulls aren't killed or hurt, unless you call having to chase a horse or a skinny man dressed funny around the arena being hurt. I've attended two of these bullfights and they're some of the most exciting events I've ever attended.

I wanted to do something a little more challenging this time: I wanted to have two plots that intersected. I don't care to read overly complicated genre books, so I don't write them. As with THE MIGHTY T, the reader will now who done what to whom pretty early in the book. The suspense comes with wondering if they're gonna get away with it, or get caught. I'm not telling!

Hopefully it will be ready for publication in July.

Sample Wednesday: A Hungover Mayor

This is a sample from the novel I'm currently working on, the second Grant Starr thriller. It is yet untitled.

Mayor Dutra, "Manny," one of the bad guys in the book, has become one of my favorite characters. He drinks too much and is crude and crooked: delicious qualifications for a fictional small-town mayor.

I was going to provide a little info to set up the scene, but thought better of it. You should be able to figure out what's going on from the text. The first draft will be done this month and I hope to have it published by June. Enjoy!

(But keep in mind this is in rough draft form and may have the heck edited out of it in rewrites.)

   Manny had trouble getting out of bed Thursday morning; he'd gone drinking again after the council meeting, and he'd tied one on good. He crawled into the shower and let the hot water beat some life into him, then stumbled into the kitchen to get the coffee going.

   When hot coffee began gurgling out of the machine, he switched a mug for the pot and held it there until it was half full, stuck the pot back on the plate and put an ice cube in the mug, pushed the cube around with a spoon and the phone rang.

   He groaned and got the handset off the counter, punched the button and croaked into the mouthpiece, "Yeah?"

   "Mayor Dutra?"

   Manny frowned. "Yeah, who's this?" The accent was familiar, but his alcohol-hammered brain couldn't produce a name or a face.

   "This is Lorne Eames, from Valley Unified Growers. How are you today?"

Eames ... He connected the name with the accent, but the name of the company didn't click. "I had better mornings."

   "I hope that doesn't mean the meeting went poorly last night."

   Ah, that Eames: the pot guy. Manny felt his spirits pick up, and felt as if a little more blood had found its way into his brain. "The council meetin' went just like I said it would."

   "Hmm ... Does that mean it looks good for the vote next week?"

   "I got three votes lined up." Manny took a hit of the coffee. "That's all I need, three."

   "Right, you said all you needed was a simple majority. What are the odds someone might change their mind by next Wednesday?"

   Manny pictured the faces of the three yes votes he had in his pocket; two had been blackmailed, so he was sure of them. Marina had said yes, as he'd thought she would, but because he had nothing on her, he couldn't be absolutely sure of her loyalty. He told Eames: "Zero. You don't got a problem with the money, do you?"

"No, Laken has the funds lined up so we'll have the cash next week."

   "I want it Wednesday night, after the council meetin'. I want it right after the vote."

   "Will the documents be signed at the meeting? We'll need our guarantees before we can release the funds."

Damn. Manny had forgotten about the papers. The papers would require the city attorney, Leonard Caldas, to be involved, and attorneys were never in a hurry to get anything done because they got paid by the hour. He wondered if he could talk to Leonard today, get him primed for next week.

   "Mayor?"

   "I forgot about the damn attorney. I'm gonna take the papers over there today and get him to put a rush on it."

   "We'll be there next Wednesday, Laken and I, with the cash. If you can get the papers signed that night, it's all yours. We're eager to get started."

   "I'll let you know," Manny said, then hung up.

   He had drained his mug and so refilled it, this time adding milk to cool the coffee. At the table, he started thinking about how he could get the attorney Leonard Caldas to do something in a week that he usually took two months to do.

Can You Use Humor in Thrilling Fiction?

Bonds Flat Road was so congested Grant and Bensen decided to find a landline instead of slogging through traffic, watching for bars to appear on their cell phones.

The parking lot next to the park office building was full, so Grant parked in the back. Walking through the lot, Bensen said, “Lots of fed-looking cars here. You think Homeland Security and the FBI are here?”

“Wouldn’t bet against it. This is a big deal now, maybe the biggest thing to ever happened around here. I bet the governor does a flyover.”

A dozen photographers elbowed each other on the observation decks, jostling for the best perspective, snapping away with big cameras. The sun was up and it was hot, yet they wore long sleeved windbreakers advertising the agencies they represented.

“Yup,” Bensen said, looking at the observation decks. “Homeland Security’s here. And the FBI, the CBI, and someone from four or five counties. And I think I see a security guard from Walmart.”

Two big feds were guarding the door, arms folded across their chests. “Can we help you?” a black guy with a knobby bald head said.

“I need to use a landline,” Grant said, pulling out his ID. “There’s no cell coverage out here and I need to call my chief.”

The guy peered at Grant’s shield for half a second while shaking his head, and said, “Sorry, Homeland Security’s using this building.”

“How about a cordless, then?” Bensen asked. “We’ll stay out here and talk. You can eavesdrop.”

The guy scowled and tightened his arms across his chest. The other guy, who looked like a movie mobster, smirked.

Grant got an idea. “Hey, is Barbara Johansen in there?”

“Yeah. She’s area supervisor. So what?”

“Tell her Detective Grant Starr is here and I need to talk to her.”

He scowled at Grant again, disappeared into the building for five minutes, poked his head back out, glared at Grant and Bensen and said, “You can come in.”

Grant walked in and Bensen followed. When Bensen passed the guy, he slipped him a folded dollar bill and said, “Keep an eye on the blue Ford, will ’ya?” He winked at the man. “There’ll be more of these if it doesn’t get dinged or scratched.”

The guy threw the bill on the floor and said, “Smartass.”

Five steps later, Grant said to Bensen, “You’re paying the deductible if my truck gets keyed.”

“Don’t worry,” Bensen said. “Guys like that are really pussycats.”

Eco-terrorism is no laughing matter, especially when hundreds of innocent people get killed because one man thinks things fish are more important than people.

In this scene, Detectives Grant Starr and Ralph Bensen have just witnessed what would likely happen (at least in my imagination) to the Don Pedro Reservoir if the O’Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy failed. Flood water tops the dam, the worst thing that can happen to an earth-and-rock-fill dam, but...

No spoilers here! Check out my THE MIGHTY T page for another excerpt, reviews, and purchase information.

It’s a tense scene, yet Bensen is cracking jokes. (He probably should think twice about agitating the angry fed at the door, though. They might need to pass through that door again before the story is over.) I like Bensen, he’s a little like me in some ways; I’m always trying to lighten a heavy situation with humor. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so well. Eyes often roll after I’ve opened my mouth.

Some readers may not like the wise-cracking Bensen, may think he should be more policeman-like, especially in a dire situation like this one. They’d likely be the ones who roll their eyes at me after I’ve said something witty, or pithy, while trying to lighten the mood.

I’ve read novels that had almost no humor in them. I have to say I don’t enjoy them as much. Humor isn’t always appropriate, but I think it is more often than not.

Cops: The Feds Vs. Locals

“People,” Johansen said to the group, after she and Grant walked into the room. “This is the detective from Modesto I told you about, Grant Starr. Detective Starr, will you tell us what you know about the unsubs?”

Grant spent the next ten minutes telling a gaggle of agents and officers from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies what he knew about Samuel Raimes, III, which wasn’t a lot, and what he suspected. 

“So,” someone in a fed shirt said, “you don’t have any evidence. Your case against this guy is all circumstantial.”

“No, we have some evidence,” Grant said. “Not on Raimes, but we have solid evidence on the woman, Mindy. We have her fingerprints and she was ID’ed by a witness. We think she was here this morning and killed the two dam operators. They were knifed, which is her MO.

“We also got some prints off a steel shed they put up in La Grange. One of them came back army, a guy who was discharged after getting caught with drugs. His and another set of prints were found on evidence at the house of the MID guy who got killed the same night the TID guy got killed. So we have that, too.”

“But against the guy, Raimes, you got nothing,” the fed said.

“Well, hell,” Grant said, a little pissed off at the fed. “At least I got something. What’d you bring to the party?”

“I just got here.”

“Well, until you have something, I suggest you shut the fuck up.”

“Hey…” The guy stood, and Grant took a step his way.

The noise level in the room ratcheted up: feds sat up and thrust their shoulders back, making their chairs creak; locals snickered and pivoted to look at the fed, who was ten inches shorter than Grant.

Johansen stood and said, “Guys, a pissing match isn’t going to help us find the unsubs.” Grant and the fed continued their stare-down. “This is a national tragedy, the worst thing since 9/11. Let’s try and keep our heads here.” She placed a hand on Grant’s chest, not pushing, touching.

This scene from THE MIGHTY T takes place at the New Don Pedro Dam in La Grange, California. The terrorist who calls himself John Lightfoot had just successfully attacked the O'Shaunessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy, causing a near-catastrophic flood. The feds have moved in and taken over the investigation.

Detectives Grant Starr and Ralph Bensen were at Don Pedro when the flood hit. Grant needed to call his chief but Don Pedro has no cell coverage, forcing him to ask to use a landline in a building Homeland Security has taken for their headquarters. He tries desperately to avoid Area Supervisor Barbara Johansen, knowing if she sees him he'll likely get sucked into Fed World and lose half the day.

Grant finds a phone and makes his call. He and Bensen are about to enjoy some free fed snacks, coffee and pastries, when Grant hears Johansen's voice calling him from somewhere down the hall. She asks him to brief a gaggle of cops and he gets sucked into Fed World, as he feared he would.

I'm not a cop, nor has anyone in my family, to my knowledge, ever been in law enforcement. What I know about how well federal cops get along with local cops I learned from TV and novels—so take this as fiction if you like. I imagine the locals don't like it when the feds march in and take over investigations; it's gotta be a pride thing.

I took advantage of this real, or imagined, animosity to create some conflict in my story. Stories without conflict are dull. I was pulling for Grant, of course; he shoulda punched the weasel fed in the nose!

Scrivener Screen Shots

Scooter asked for a graphic of my Scrivener screen. Here it is.

On the left you can see I've organized each chapter into scenes. You can also see a folder for characters, places, and research. Everything can be linked into the Scrivener document, even web sites, PDFs, and documents or pictures on your computer.

Upper right is the scene synopsis. This shows up as a card when you click on the Card View organizer in the middle top of the screen. Document notes are on the right. This is where I write notes about what might be needed in a rewrite like more description and the day and time, if it's important.

You'll notice in the upper left corner I have a document titled "Opening Scene" and under it "Alt-Bull Jumped". This is text deleted from the scene but saved because I thought there might be a chance I would want to put it back in. It won't be complied in the document or included in word counts because I've unchecked the "Include In Compile" box on the right, in the General Meta-Data area. The graphic you see is an actual scene so it's labeled "Scene", "First Draft", and the "Include in Compile" box is checked.

Hope this helps.

Scrivener for Windows Update

I wrote about some tools I've found for writing, for both the PC and the iPad, in a previous post. This post is a brief update on the writing program Scrivener.

I'd like to get a MacBook Pro, but it's not in the budget. Scrivener is in version 2.0 (I believe) for the Mac but is still in beta for Windows. The current beta version is .26. The finished product is set to be released in August, if they stay on schedule. I believe it's only $35. I've had no problems with the beta but many features are still missing.

Scrivener is a feature-laden program; there's a steep learning curve if you want to use it all. I was drawn to it because it lets you organize your work into chapters and/or scenes.

I wrote both my novels in Word 97, with each chapter as a separate document. That worked well for about the first half of the book, but when I wrote the last half I had a hard time remembering some character names and who did what to whom. To dig the info out I had to first remember which chapter it was in so I could open the correct document and run searches until I found what I was looking for. Sometimes I found it quickly, sometimes it took a while.

After the first draft was written I combined all the chapter documents into one big file. That worked better for searches but was a large cumbersome file to handle.

I've been writing my next Grant Starr novel scene-by-scene, with each scene in a separate tab in Scrivener. It's been so much easier to go back and find something or someone. In addition, Scrivener has easy-to-use summary features. There's a box on the right side of the screen—when you're not in full-screen writing mode, which I usually am—where you can jot down notes about what happens in the scene. You can also organize chapters and scenes with file cards and a character-based flow chart.

Another thing I've done differently is write scenes out of chronological order. I'd stick with one character and write what they do, say, throughout the week. Then I'd go back and break that document up so it fits chronologically. It's helped with character consistency because I could focus on what one person was doing. I didn't do this with my first two books; they were written straight through from scene one to the final scene.

The problem with jumping around in time is it's easy to lose the continuity of the work. Because you're jumping around in time, it's difficult at times to picture the plot chronologically. The fix is to edit the scenes and chapters as one continuous document, which Scrivener lets you do. It's not as smooth as editing one document in Word, but it still allows you to keep your story organized into scenes and chapters, if you choose to do so.

I place my Scrivener file in my DropBox directory so it's automatically backed up on the "cloud" and it's backed up via my portable hard drive. Scrivener also lets you make a zipped back up file at any time.

I do a lot of writing on my iPad, with either OmnWriter or iA Writer. Both programs save files in simple .txt file formats so they're easy to import into Scrivener. If you want to edit part of a Scrivener file, you have to export it to a .txt file, then place it in the DropBox directory. Once done, you can access the file from your iPad. iWriter links directly with DropBox through their menu.

I plan on buying Scrivener when it becomes available. If and when I get a Mac, I'll have to buy the Mac version. I won't mind because I'll finally have a Mac and it's only $35 (maybe $45, I forget).

A Monster With Personality

Creature from "Aliens"

This was good: the prey’s psychic output had increased ten-fold, exciting the creature. It fed on the rich emotions.

Were it not for the new program, its new adaptation, the creature’s instincts would demand that it now devour its prey and flee. Instead, the program instructed it to do something it never would have otherwise thought to do: reveal itself to the prey. It was not by accident that its species had survived for a million years; they were masters in the art of stealth. Their enemies could not destroy what they did not know existed or could not see. Revealing itself went against this most basic of instincts.

But it promised great potential psychic rewards.

It rose out of the water, revealing its ancient face to the prey. The reward the new programming had promised was realized, in greater abundance than imagined; it gorged itself on the prey’s fear.

It opened its mouth and bared its teeth, to see how the prey would respond. It was again rewarded.

Burke almost died of fear when a large black, thing, rose up from the canal. It floated with him for a few seconds, then opened its eyes; three yellow slashes in its forehead blinked, and he screamed louder than he ever thought he could scream.

He slapped and kicked at the water, trying to distance himself from the thing. Fear galvanized him, flooding his body with adrenaline. His mind momentarily shut down the pain pathway in his spinal cord so he wouldn’t feel the throbbing leg; he couldn’t afford the distraction.

He bumped up against the canal wall and flung his arms behind him, trying to crabwalk up the wall. His hands slipped. Panic threatened to consume him and he searched frantically for a possible solution, some way to survive, to get away from this impossible thing.

The creature opened its mouth, revealing eight-inch-long silvery teeth that flashed and sparkled in the moonlight; jagged and wicked: he understood how he had lost his leg, and he knew he would not be leaving the canal alive.

His mind slipped toward insanity.

If you read or write horror fiction, do you think the monsters (aliens, creatures, gnomes, etc.) should have a personality? Or should they just be a big mean monster?

In my horror novel, CANALS, the canal monster makes its appearance early in the book. Its physical characteristics are revealed bit-by-bit, as is its personality. It thinks, calculates, and makes adjustments in its feeding pattern as it adapts to its prey. It even has a gender (which I won't reveal). The reader learns later in the book the monster is one of a species that was once abundant on the...

In some books and films, monsters are just monsters. They show up out of nowhere to kill or eat people. Their "motivation" is usually filling their stomachs or plain savagery. Most don't have offspring they're trying to protect or feed and aren't part of any community. They're just monsters.

In the movie ALIEN, and subsequent follow-ups, the monster had a personality and a goal: the perpetuation of its species. It corralled the humans into its nest to use as incubators for its young. One wonders how it survived before the planet was colonized.

What kind of monsters do you prefer, if you like stories with monsters? Do you like the simple, straightforward monster with no personality? Or do you prefer a monster that's a little more complex?

Tools and Tips For the Writing Process

This post will be different than all but one of my previous posts. I thought I would share some tips I've learned about the writing process.

Everyone who writes on a regular basis must figure out a process that works for them. I've seen several hundred recommendations about "how" to write on the Internet and in books, but each author can only speak for himself. For instance, Hemingway is said to prefer writing while standing; no thanks. Mark Twain is said to write while in a reclined position in bed; I would fall asleep in ten minutes. Etcetera, etcetera.

Besides, most writers mentioned in quotes wrote with pen and paper; we live in an electronic world now.

With this in mind, here are some things that work for me.

Time of Day For Writing

I write best in the morning when my mind is uncluttered by "day crap." I wrote most of my first novel, CANALS, between the hours of 5:30 and 8:00 a.m. Afternoon is OK if I shut out the world. (I discuss how I do this in this post.) I write poorly in the evening and envy those who can. I'm simply amazed by people who can write while watching TV or chatting on Twitter.

Scrivener for Windows

I now write with Scrivener for Windows. It's a great writing program. The only thing it lacks that other programs like it have is a graphic timeline for each character in your novel. There's probably some way to get at that information easily with features like "Key Words," but I haven't figured it out yet.

I did a lot of research while writing THE MIGHTY T. The setting for the novel is Modesto, where I live, and surrounding areas, including the Hetch Hetchy section of the Yosemite National Park. I wanted streets and locations, etc., to be as realistic as possible to appeal to local readers, whom I expect to buy my book in droves. (Most of my local citizens apparently missed that memo.)

Said research was organized as printouts stuffed into file folders, bookmarks in Firefox, or downloads stored on the hard drive. Toward the end of writing the first draft, and later when editing, finding specific information was time consuming because I had to first remember where it was cataloged. Additionally, I work on two computers!

You can place all of your research in Scrivener regardless of the format. Web pages can be dragged into the Research Tab for later review (provided you have an Internet connection). Photos and documents on your computer can be linked to. Even PDFs can be placed in the Research Tab. Everything is in one place.

My Scrivener files sit in my DropBox folder so they're available for viewing (but not editing) on my iPad and editing on my old Acer (see below).

When creating text, I write best on an uncluttered screen. I don't want to see a menu or notes or anything. Scrivener allows you to do that with their Full Screen mode and you can set it up so the text you're writing stays in the middle of the screen, like a typewriter. Very cool for creating new text.

Scrivener for Windows is currently in beta and is free. The functions I use most work fine, but I'm looking forward to it's official release. It'll only cost about forty bucks—a bargain. The Mac version is at 2.0, so it's fully functional. I would love to switch platforms; anyone want to donate a Mac?

Full reviews of Scrivener abound on the Internet. I've just scratched the surface here.

iPad, iA Writer, and the clean writing environment.

I learned to concentrate in a busy environment when studying for grueling state board exams. I could sit at a cafe inside a busy mall while memorizing the origin and distribution of cranial nerves and the signs and symptoms of, as well as the differential diagnosis for, benign intercranial hypertension.

My old Acer notebook computer served me well for six years, but the battery lasts only ninety minutes now and I've somehow damaged the "V" key; all words with a "V" have to be retyped.

Now I do a lot of writing on an iPad. I bought the iA Writer app for ninety-nine cents and an Apple wireless keyboard (NOT ninety-nine cents). Writer saves files in .txt format so documents can be imported into any word processor or writing program, including Scrivener. You have spell checking because it's native to Apple's iOS, but there's no formatting whatsoever. Which leads me to...

I prefer to write in what I like to call "retro" fashion. Writer uses a monospace font and I write with Courier in Scrivener; reminds me of a typewriter. I set up the iPad to display in reversed mode: black and white are reversed. This lets me type white text onto a black background. Writing like this is easy on my eyes and allows the iPad's already great battery to last even longer. The Apple keyboard has a great feel. My only complaint about it is, it's "Delete" key acts like the "Backspace" key on a PC keyboard; very strange and hard to get used to.

Writer syncs with your DropBox account so your files are available on any device you have connected to DropBox. I don't completely trust cloud computing, though, so I also email my files to myself from inside Writer. When I write or edit on my desktop, I save the files to a portable hard drive every day. EVERY DAY. Lastly, when you back up your iPad to iTunes, you can access all your Writer files and save them to your computer if DropBox is down.

OmmWriter

OmmWriter is a cool writing app similar to Writer in that it uses a simple, clean interface. I use it occasionally on my desktop, but not often because Scrivener's full screen works the same and has a built-in spell checker. I haven't broken my addiction to on-the-fly spell checking. The OmmWriter app became available in the App Store yesterday, May 30. It lacks file sync with DropBox but lets you email your file to yourself and, of course, you have access to your files through iTunes.

What OmmWriter, desktop or app, has that Writer and Scrivener don't is a sound track designed to help you focus and be creative. I've used it once or twice with the Acer, and with headphones, and I must admit the music really helps me concentrate. Try it out for free on your PC or Mac and see if it helps your writing. It's $4.99 for the iPad. iPad app has spell checking, because it's built in iOS.

MicroSoft Word. I'll still use Word because Smashwords requires files in Word's old .doc format. It's a great program, no doubt, especially when used in Full Screen mode so you don't get distracted by all the menu options. I no longer use it when writing drafts because I'm tempted to fuss over whether a word should be italicized or not, or bring up the thesaurus to see if I can find a different word (there's ALWAYS a different word). Those activities are for edits.

What else? I found a pair of headphones on Amazon that fit snuggly into my ears and block most ambient noise. They're made for the iPhone but of course will work with any device with a standard headphone jack. It was less that $20 and sounds better than my Bose ear buds that cost $70. My Bose QuietComfort II headphones are the best at silencing the world but they're so big that I rarely use them; I feel self conscious wearing them, like I'm trying to be antisocial. Plus the large case doesn't fit in my small briefcase.

I hope you found something useful here.

If you have tips or tricks you've found useful for your writing or studying, please feel free to share, if you have the time.

Why Psychopath Mindy Is So Fascinating

Mindy pretended to look for someone for a few seconds, then spotted Hammond at the bar on his usual stool. She’d seen him there before, when she was a redhead and wore four times the clothing she did tonight. The others had seen him there, too. The man was incredibly predictable.

Now that she was here and it was time, her fingers started to itch, but it was a mild itch. Had Griffith not relieved some of her tension earlier in the van, it would’ve been all she could do not to cut his head off right here in the bar in front of everyone.

Instead, Mindy followed the plan, stuck to the script, and let the pig think he was picking her up. He disgusted her, with his big chin and shiny Rolex, but she warmed to the part, knowing how it would end for him.

The fool kept the drinks coming, thinking he was getting her drunk. What an idiot. The last man who thought he could out drink her wound up in the hospital getting his stomach pumped. She drank Hammond’s wine, had a little buzz but acted drunk, slurring her words and stumbling when she went to the restroom as she’d been coached.

The food, though, was wonderful. When Hammond suggested the fish and chips, she’d fought the urge to jab him in the eye with her fork. She ordered her cheeseburger medium rare, ate every crumb and soaked up every drop of juice on the plate. For those few minutes, she hadn’t even minded Hammond, who droned on about himself, how important he was. What a great man he was.

The waiter took her plate and Hammond poured more wine. She feigned interest in his blathering, and noticed his glossy eyes and slurred speech: he was smashed. It was time.

She rubbed his leg with her foot, moved it to his groin—this she enjoyed. She entertained the idea that it might be fun to play with him a little before she stuck him.

When they left the bar, she quickly scanned the street and surrounding businesses for cops, or anyone else looking her way. Seeing no one, she let Hammond walk her across the street to the park.

He was talking but she wasn’t listening: the itch had grown. No need to resist it now. He beeped his car unlocked. She stumbled against the car and let him kiss her on the mouth. He stuck his tongue down her throat and she pulled his hips against her.

Inside, she had him start the engine and turn on the air; she wanted the windows up and the moonroof closed in case he screamed. She cranked the radio and unzipped his pants. He moaned and reclined his seat. 

“Just a little something first, to take the edge off.” She reached down and slipped the knife out of her boot, extended the blade. 

Mindy is a psychopathic killer and member of John Lightfoot’s gang of terrorists. You’ll discover in her brief back story, about chapter six, how she came to be a killer. If you’re guessing Lightfoot had something to do with, you’re on the right track. She already had the raw material, she just needed a little guidance.

It’s difficult for an author to get carried away writing a psychopathic serial killer (Is that redundant?). As bad as you can write a character, there’s always a real person who was worse. How could you outdo a Ted Bundy?

Why are people fascinated by serial killers? Their stories sell more newspapers and fill more air time than all others, except perhaps royal weddings. They’re so profitable media outlets run follow-ups until the public finally gets bored and moves on to the next sensational story.

Mindy had a particularly nasty fondness for...

Mindy and Griffith were going at it in the VW van, the only semi-private place other than the steel shed, which smelled like gas. Mindy liked it rough, rougher than Griffith cared for, and always had to be on top, in control. When she climaxed, he saw something in her eyes that spooked him. He always saw it, which is why he never let her bring her knife.

Later, a man named Stu wasn’t as observant as Griffith, and paid for his lust with his life. 

My guess is, we’re attracted to their stories because we can’t believe there are people who’d actually do horrible things to as many of their fellow beings as possible. After all, we’re not like that; how could they?

Mindy was such a juicy character, I just couldn’t let her go.

Curious Readers Can’t Help But Peek At This

They talked baseball while Bensen popped pills between spoonfuls of oatmeal, talked about wives and kids—Bensen’s, Grant had neither—and co-workers, and a little about women because married men like to probe into the lives of the single to see what they were missing, to remember what they gave up. 

Then, later:

“We gotta find this guy,” Grant said. “Contact his family, see if they know where he is or what he’s up to. Find out who his dentist is, or was. Talk to his high school and college friends. Talk to his teachers.”

Grant’s phone rang as Jackson left: a secretary from the Environmental Defense Fund. The EDF had no record of anyone getting kicked out of their group for being a nut.

Grant wasn’t surprised, but who he really wanted to hear from was Tom Richardson.

“What else you doing now?” he asked Bensen.

“I’m gonna talk to you about Amber,” Bensen said, throwing his feet on the corner of Grant’s desk. “I saw you two making eyes yesterday, and she stayed in the room after everyone else left. D’you hook up?”

“We had a couple of drinks.”

Bensen grinned and nodded. “Good for you. You don’t go out enough. What’s she look like naked?”

“I have no idea. Besides, you’re married. You don’t really wanna know.”

“Come on man. I can’t have single sex anymore, I gotta live it through guys like you.”

“You’re not gonna live it through me. Now get outta here before I call Linda.”

And finally:

Amber called and invited Grant to dinner, so he left Bensen’s house in the bottom of the eighth; the Giants were hopelessly behind. Bensen bitched at him for taking off early, but gave him an elbow at the door and said, “Details man. I want details tomorrow.”

You might say Bensen was being a bit of a voyeur, might you not? Trying to peek into Grant’s love life like that. Good thing Grant isn’t the kiss-and-tell type. He gives Bensen nothing throughout the entire text of THE MIGHTY T. You know Bensen’s dying to know, too. If you read my last post, you know Amber’s hot.

People read fiction for many reasons, mostly for entertainment. Who doesn’t like to slip out of their skin for a few hours to live another’s life? We may be bored or curious, or just looking for an adventure, for a fun ride.

What I’m talking about is, we readers are a little snoopy. Like Ralph Bensen, we like to know a little about our friends’ personal lives. Unlike Bensen, we do our snooping by reading books instead of making pests of ourselves.

A novel can take you somewhere you’d get arrested for being caught at in real life. And I like that.


* Disclaimer: This post was typed on an old Acer notebook computer with a busted “V” key. Any typos inoling a “V” are the fault of the keyboard and are not mine.

Local Settings Make for Easy Research

My novels, CANALS and the soon-to-be-released THE MIGHTY T, are set in or around my hometown, Modesto, California. I've always been interested in how authors get ideas for their books, and I bet you are, too. You'll read about the genesis and writing of my novels in future posts, so stay tuned.

Setting your book locally makes for easy, or easier, research. In CANALS, an alien monster is living in the irrigation canals running through and around Modesto. I drive by and over these canals every day; it was nothing to stop and look, and snap some pictures.

You can do the same if you live near or visit your settings. Then, when you write scenes set in these locations, you can whip out a photo or look at a digital image and make your writing more precise and realistic.

You can also make everything up. However, I find descriptive writing less mentally taxing than creative writing; electricity and I have something in common: we seek the path of least resistance.

Visiting or having pictures of your locations saves precious creative energy for plotting and dialog, where it's really needed. Daily creative time is finite, is it not?

I ventured further out of town for THE MIGHTY T, but still could drive to my locations to snoop and take photos. This is the O'Shaughnessy Dam:

O'Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy

See that room-like outcropping in the middle of the dam? Wait until you read what happens there!

Dams are magnificent and immensely useful structures. They're also controversial; good fodder for fiction. THE MIGHTY T deals with controversy surrounding this dam and the river it controls.

The O'Shaughnessy Dam made a lake out of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which is part of Yosemite National Park. That it was built in the first place is tragic, but there it is, and only two hours away.

Seeing gates and buildings, and the dam itself, and having photos of them, helped tremendously when I wrote the novel. And saved brain-energy for biting action and dialog. (No people or animals are actually bitten in the book, but people are certainly harmed. It's a thriller, after all.)

You can look at other photos of the dam and lake here, if you so wish.

The second dam in THE MIGHTY T is the New Don Pedro Dam:

New Don Pedro Dam

The New Don Pedro Dam is an earth-and-rock-fill dam and is the setting for the exciting conclusion of THE MIGHTY T. John Lightfoot attempts to... Later, Everett!

One scene took place in front of the dam, where nosy, plotting visitors aren't allowed, so no photos were possible: Google Earth came to the rescue. I relied on Google Earth quite a bit, at both locations. It shows elevations, allows you to measure distances, and lets you nose around in places the authorities don't allow. Again, making the action more accurate while preserving creative energy.

I feel sorry for you poor science fiction authors, who have to make everything up! My brain would ooze from my ears if I had to do that.

A parting shot of the O'Shaughnessy Dam, in proper perspective:

The Dammed Hetch Hetchy Valley

A beautiful setting, no?