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.

Finally Got The Thing Started

At some point a writer has to stop plotting and researching and just get the novel started. The first page can be the most difficult to write, but it's the most important. You can't finish a novel you haven't started.

This is how I get started on a novel.

1)  I get the basic idea of what I want the book to be about by either dreaming it up or through an "ah ha" moment. The idea for my new WIP came from another of my novels. One bad guy got away at the end of THE MIGHTY T (I won't say which as that would be a spoiler), and I kind of liked that bad guy. In fact, I often like my bad guys as much or more than the good guys, even though they can be rotten to the core. They're often very interesting people. So one day months ago I got the idea that it would be fun to do a follow up novel with him/her (no spoilers), and I plopped that idea into a pot I leave on a back burner in my mind.

2)  When I'm ready to get serious about writing the novel, I open a text document in Scrivener titled "Plot Thots" and I started jotting down some, well, plot thoughts. With CANALS I began with the question "What if there was a monster in the canals around here?" and I went from there. With THE MIGHTY T I thought "What if some guy, some nut, got tired of waiting for something to be done to help the poor salmon and decided to blow up the dam?" And then I let my imagination go. One idea leads to another, which leads to yet another. And so on. Pretty soon I've got a (very) rough plot outlined. I like to know how a book starts and how it ends before I begin writing it. I leave what happens in between to my imagination.

3)  Next I do some research. I don't want readers saying "that couldn't happen" when they read my books and they can't if I do my research. With CANALS I dug into the history of irrigation in and around Modesto, and I visited and took pictures of canals and I learned when they were filled and emptied. With THE MIGHTY T I dug into the controversy surrounding declining salmon populations in the Tuolumne River and what was or wasn't being done about it. (I read an article in today's paper about the state of California mandating that 15% more water be allowed into the Tuolumne and Merced Rivers this year--the controversy continues.) I also want to know who's on either side of the line drawn in the dirt. I research communities my story will take place in and visit them if I can. If they're too far away to visit, there's always Google Earth.

4)  When I feel I've got a good understanding of the issues, places, and things, I'll give the characters some thought. But not too much. I like to give them something to get them going but I want them to have the space to become what they will. I'm sure this gives you ardent plotters the willies. I need to understand enough about a character to bring him or her to life, but not so much that they can't grow and develop as the story progresses. Whether based wholly or partially on someone I know or know of, they will still be the product of my imagination. I want them to be mine by the time I've finished writing the book, and have finished the edits. I'm writing my third Grant Starr novel so a few of the characters have already been fleshed out through two books. Easy stuff there.

5)  With the basic plot, setting, and characters in mind, I'm ready to start the novel. It's time to stop researching and thinking about the characters and plot, it's time to start the story. How do I do this? I sit my butt down in front of the computer, turn the WiFi off, mute the phone, and get started. There's no other way to say it.

It doesn't matter if the beginning gets completely rewritten later or if a character turns out to be a better or worse person than you initially imagined, that'll all be worked out. The only thing that matters now is getting the book started, and then making and sticking to a writing schedule. I like to write a minimum of 1,000 words a day when I'm creating. Today I wrote 1,800. Tomorrow might be 800 or 2,000. I don't beat myself up if I come in under 1,000 but I give myself hell if I fail to write any new words, or fail to even try.

Imagination is like voice recognition software: the more you use it the better it gets. Give your imagination everything it needs to succeed and I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised at how it will reward you.

1st Review for DEATH OF A MATADOR: 5 Stars

I received my first review on Amazon.com for my latest novel DEATH OF A MATADOR. I'll save you the time of clicking on over to Amazon and publish the review here:

Powers delivers a page-turning police procedural with Death of a Matador, the latest thriller featuring Detective Grant Starr. The action takes place in--until now--a peaceful little dusty town in Central California. From the first page, the story plunges into the fascinating culture of the local Portuguese community, back-stabbing small-town politics, and the inner workings of a police department dealing with crimes related to current hotbutton issues: animal rights activism and the emerging corporate farming of medicinal marijuana.

Powers is a natural storyteller and the dialogue is especially entertaining. You feel like you're riding along with the detectives and officers listening in on their good-natured ribbing, privy to personal and confidential conversations as they unriddle a sudden spate of murders and scramble to protect witnesses. The banter is rich with cultural lingo, convincing police jargon, and spot-on buddy-cop wit.

I also enjoyed the vicarious excitement of wheeling Detective Starr's 1970 Ferrari along a California highway at 120 mph with gorgeous Detective Amber Whitehall riding shotgun! :-)

While the motivations of the corrupt mayor are fully explained, I'd like more insight into the mind of the matador killer. It's understandable that most people like animals, and most people fear going to prison, but I feel that this villain puts himself in extreme peril as an animal-rights activist and as a criminal avoiding capture. I'd like a little more explanation into what makes him tick, what drives him to activism and allows him to be capable of such cold-blooded actions.

Also, I'd like to see Grant Starr put in a bit more personal danger. Sure, he gets shot at, and others rely on him to save their necks, but I'd like to see him sweat-it-out a bit more, to see him in more up-close and personal all-out, whup-ass conflict with the bad guys.

All in all, this story kept me flipping the pages with fully-formed characters, tight action and suspense, very little fluff, and a surprisingly exotic setting via the Portuguese community and their traditions. If you're in the mood for a riveting detective thriller, I recommend it!

I'd love to get more reviews and would be willing to gift a copy of the book to anyone interested in reading and reviewing it. Honest reviews, of course.

Enthusiastic 5 Stars for CANALS

I found this review on Goodreads, a site I don't visit often enough. I won't leave the name of the reviewer but you can check out CANALS on Goodreads here and see who wrote it.

Most modern authors make me break my five page rule. I prefer to find myself attached to a novel within those first five precious pages. I find myself having to break this rule-often- just to keep reading alive. Powers well captivated me within the first five and only sucked me into his story deeper with each turning page. 

This is a darker novel and with that, I find his mastery of words worthy of wanting more from his twisted and brilliant imagination. 

This is a perfect example of what literature should be. A full five stars.

Hey wait a minute! "Twisted"? Still, it's nice when something you do is appreciated. By strangers.

It's not all kisses and hugs though:

Horror and sci-fi are NOT my favorite genres, so I'm probably not the best critic. This was way too gory for me, I ended up skipping over huge sections of the story. I was like yeah, yeah, blood and guts, human suffering, gore, gore. I get it. This monster is evil. 

He is a good writer, though, even if I didn't like the content.

It's true, there is a lot of blood and guts and suffering. Okay, and some gore.

And boy is that monster evil!

THE MIGHTY T in Top 5 Books of 2012

Rick Bylina, author and blogger, has posted that THE MIGHTY T was one of the top five books he read in 2012. He reviewed it on his blog as well as on Amazon. You can read his post here:

Book Review: Best Books For 2012

I appreciate Rick for taking the time to write and post book reviews on his blog as well as posting the reviews on Amazon.com. Very few people go to the trouble of doing that. I'm also quite pleased he liked THE MIGHTY T. I think it's the best of my three novels.


Speaking of novels, I've given up the battle with CreateSpace to get them to print my book correctly. The most recent email I received from them said my book printed correctly, which it most assuredly did not. Here's what page one looked like:

Notice any missing text?

So I reset all text set in the Dante Small Caps typeface to Dante and then capitalized the words. It doesn't look as professional, but I don't feel like going through another round of proof-email-email back-nothing's-wrong-with-your-book with them. When you ring them up you get someone who sounds like a 16-year-old on their first job.

DEATH OF A MATADOR Ebook Available on Amazon

I'm pleased to announce that after 18 months my new Grant Starr thriller is available in ebook format on Amazon.com. I've ordered the proof for the quality paperback version. I expect to take a few weeks to get it proofed, make any necessary corrections, and upload the new files.

Why only Amazon? I used to offer my books on other venues like Smashwords, iBooks, and Barnes and Noble, but I sold practically nothing on those sites. When Amazon introduced it's Select program, I decided to sign up although it meant removing my ebook titles from all other sites. Nothing's happened to make me change my mind since.

DEATH OF A MATADOR was initially slated to be released last fall, but life got in the way. I'm still behind schedule as my next Grant Starr thriller was expected out about now. It's not likely to be released until next spring.

DEATH OF A MATADOR is not a THE MIGHTY T, which I think is a better book. It has more action, explosions, knife play, etc. While not the best of the two, I think MATADOR is a damn good story. I'm especially fond of Mayor Manny, a rascal and a murderer. I liked how his character turned out so much I was tempted to name the book MAYOR MANNY. Thank goodness I didn't.

The book is dedicated to Nancy, whose last name I'll keep private. Nancy was a patient of mine (I no longer practice) deeply involved in the Portuguese Catholic community. I treated her for years and listened to many stories of festas (pronounced "feshta"), bullfights, queens, dances, and parades.

In the spring of 2011, after I'd self-published THE MIGHTY T and CANALS, I was looking for another idea for a book. In comes Nancy for a treatment, and this time when she mentioned she'd been at a bullfight again, it clicked. I asked her to tell me more about the bullfights and the rest, as they are fond of saying, is history.

Much of what I know about the Portuguese in the Central San Joaquin Valley I learned from Nancy. They are the most active group of people I've ever met. Here's what Manny tells Grant and McKay in chapter four, when he's giving them a lesson on Portagees:

“Now lemme tell you about the church. Portagees love their church almost as much as they love their land and their damn cows. They love it so much they make up reasons to celebrate it every damn weekend from April to November. We got parades for cows and we got celebrations for saints nobody else ever heard of. And Portagees eat. Goddamn how we eat. You’d think everyone of us would be as big as a house the way we eat.

“But we ain’t, and let me tell you why: Portagees work. Sure, we got a few lazy ones, but most Portagees work their ass off all their life. There’s no such thing as a Portagee takin’ a retirement. The farmers around here drop dead in their fields, or on their tractors or in their damn milk barns, workin’ till the day they die.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t that what you want on your gravestone?"

And, lastly, Nancy had her kids save me a seat at the bullfight, right in the front row. I've written Nancy a bit part in the book, doing what she does in real life: running the concessions at the bullfights.

I'd also like to thank my main beta reader, Jay Krow, for his valuable insight and suggestions. He pointed out the bull probably didn't macerate the matador's liver when he ran him through with his horn. The bull likely lacerated it.

I wrote the entire novel in Scrivener for Windows. Well, I compiled it in Scrivener. I wrote some of it on my iPad. I'll post about it some time.

DEATH OF A MATADOR is on sale for $2.99 through the end of next week, a day or two after the election is over. My other two novels are also on sale for $2.99. Regular price is $5.99.

I hope you enjoy the book. It's a great story.

Getting the First Draft Done

I'm writing my third novel (not counting the really bad one I almost finished back in the early 1990s), so I feel I can speak on this topic with some degree of authority. I suppose I'm directing my remarks to the new novelist, the one searching for "the best way to write a book."

I'd like to limit my remarks to the first draft, which is where all novels begin.

1. Understand that nothing matters more than getting your first draft out of your head and down on paper, or the electronic equivalent of paper. Stop thinking about your ebook and print covers, what typeface you'll publish the print book in, your likely target market, and all the other things that don't matter because YOU HAVEN'T WRITTEN THE BOOK YET.

2. I write my first draft in the Courier typeface for several reasons, the most important being it's so basic. It's not pretty and even if you italicize a word, you can hardly tell it's italic when you print out the draft. Courier, to me, represents words. Just words, nothing else. Train yourself to write with little or no italics; let the words convey the meaning, not formatting.

3. Write every day. Any writer who's written a lot will tell you that you need to write every day. You'll train your brain to think like a writer and you'll get your first draft done faster.

4. Don't show your work to anyone. If you belong to a writing group, show them your work after you've finished the first draft. You don't need to be thinking about subplots and characterization, all that stuff, until you've got the story down on paper. If you take advice from others, start on your first rewrite.

5. Get inside your head. It's your story, you're the creator. Do whatever you have to to get inside your head far enough to pull the story out. For me this means sitting by myself somewhere. I can occasionally write in public now as long as I don't know anyone around me. I can tune out their noise, with headphones if I need to. I recommend new writers find a place where there are no distractions, including no Internet connection.

6. Separate research time from writing time. Remember, your goal is to get the first draft written as quickly as possible. Stopping to look up the name of a street or how many miles out of town a character lives interrupts the flow of writing the first draft. Place an asterisk at the front of a word you need to do some research on, then come back later, during research time, and do your looking-up. Which brings me to...

7. It's okay to schedule research time. We can't be spot on with our writing day-after-day. Use the "down days" to look up stuff you didn't look up when you were really cooking and the words were flowing.

8. It's also okay to write scenes out of sequence. Say you sit down in your private place to write, and you're seeing a scene that's half a day ahead in the manuscript. But it's so vivid and you know exactly who's going to say what and what's going to happen. It's okay to give yourself permission to write that scene. This is where Scrivener is so helpful. I organize my novel by chapters and scenes; it's easy to find my way around that way.

9. Don't worry so much about things like spelling and keeping the names of minor characters straight. Get the first draft done, then iron out the inconsistencies. (Just make sure you do; I've read many complaints about authors mixing up the names of major characters, like their main characters. Very embarrassing.)

The first draft is sacrosanct: without it there is no novel, which means until you get it done you're not a novelist.

So quit reading this post and get back to writing!

Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, A Writer's Life For Me

Remember this song from Pinocchio?

Hi-diddle-dee-dee
A writer’s life for me
A high silk hat and a silver cane
A watch of gold with a diamond chain

Hi-diddle-dee-day
A writer’s life is gay
It’s great to be a celebrity
A writer’s life for me

Hi-diddle-dee-dum
A writer’s life is fun

Hi-diddle-dee-dee
A writer’s life for me
A wax mustache and a beaver coat
A pony cart and a billy goat

Hi-diddle-dee-dum
A writer’s life is fun
You wear your hair in a pompadour
You ride around in a coach and four
You stop and buy out a candy store
A writer’s life for me!

(Lyrics: Ned Washington, except for my changes)


Not exactly as you remember? Can you spot my changes? Pinocchio had been convinced he would be an actor, not a writer. But hey, at one time I thought that’s what a writer’s life would be. Sort of.

There’ve been no coaches for me, I don’t have a beaver coat, and my hair will never be in a pompadour, so here’s my updated version of what I’d like my writer’s life to be:

I get up early to write. Early is good because the house is quiet and there are no distractions. I’m not tempted by the Internet or Twitter or Facebook that early, for some odd reason. I’m ready to write. After I get my brain to wake up, of course.

I write until my brain has had enough or the muse has left the building. Or both, which is usually the case. That might happen in two hours or it might happen in four. Rarely more than four. I write in my office, which has a lock on the door to prevent others from wandering in to give me a kiss or ask me if I need anything or to tell me they’re going to the store.

I write every day. EVERY DAY. Even Christmas--at least a page--and even on my birthday. Even when my wife and I go away for the weekend. If I’m writing, I’m writing. I can take a break from editing or formatting, but not writing. The muse is fickle and does not like to be ignored. Ignore the muse and she might leave me alone for days or weeks, and that would be bad.

Once I’ve written, the rest of the day is mine. I’ll exercise, spend time with family, cook, read, and maybe even relax in front of the TV with my wife. Maybe do some writing-business like talk to my agent or publisher.

That’s about it for my dream writer’s-life, when I’m creating. If I’m editing, I can do that anywhere there’s a desk. Changes are made on paper then input into the computer later. Easy.


In reality, as I’m not yet supporting my family with my writing and I have a day job, I write at odd times and in odd places. We don’t have a spare room in our condo so I have to leave the house to find the solitude I need.

I can write almost anywhere family or friends are not, because they feel like they’ve got to talk to me even though they see I’m busy writing: the library, a coffee shop, a café, the break area of a grocery store ... Almost anywhere.

When writing in public, I have my noise-canceling headphones--I don’t care if people think I’m being rude wearing them in public--and I write with the either the OmmWriter or iA Writer apps on my iPad. OmmWriter is nice for times I’m writing in noisy environments because it comes with it’s own soundtrack. Writer is simpler to use and links with Dropbox for easy access to my files.

My time is restricted now; I don’t have four consecutive hours for writing every day. I have to take what I can get, when I can get it. It’s almost impossible for me to write in the evening; my brain seems to be unable to focus on writing then. I suppose I could train it to, but I like to spend that time with my wife.

And of course, there is currently no agent or publisher to talk business with; I’m self-published. They may change, or it may not.


If you write, what is your ideal writing day or schedule? What compromises do you have to make now because of family commitments or a day job?

Using (Poor) Grammar to Help Dictate Pace

In my last post here, I introduced Fred Reese and Jim Waterman, two oldtimers from my novel CANALS. In that post, we learn Fred is upset at how the country seems to be awash with rude people.

Here's another excerpt from CANALS, also featuring Jim and Fred. I've ignored some rules of good sentence structure in the final paragraph to change the pace of the narration, to let the reader known something might be about to happen:

“All volunteer personnel are to move fifty feet away from the canals immediately,” the radio clipped to Fred Reese’s belt said.

Fred had another cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and he held a fishing rod in his right hand, at least in his mind’s eye. He didn’t ordinarily smoke so much, but because he knew it really bothered Jim, he kept one going. He mostly just let them burn down; no need to inhale to get Jim’s goat.

He knew he’d have to remove the earplugs sooner or later, but right now later sounded better than sooner. He cast out with his imaginary rod.

Jim heard the radio crackle but was too far away to make out the words and too stubborn to cross the street to find out. “He’s wearing the damn thing, let him answer it.”

The light flickered again: Jim walked back to the battery, kicked it, walked back to the railing and heard the radio again, turned his head to yell at Fred and walked into the thin stand holding the light, knocking it over the railing. He reaches and catches the stand but a bolt pops off and the light falls and is dangling two feet above the water, held only by the wire attaching it to the battery. He grabs for the wire, hears glass breaking followed by a brief blinding flash, then everything is black but the yellow-orange circle of light in the center of his vision where the bursting bulb has seared his retinas. He swears and gropes for the wire.

Then:

Jim Waterman’s vision had just returned when he found the wire. He hesitated and considered letting the damn thing go. What, would they dock his pay?

Just then he felt something sharp prick his hand. He quickly jerked the hand up, looked and blinked, squeezing his eyes shut before reopening them: his hand wasn’t cut, it wasn’t there. Blood squirted from his wrist and arced into the canal.

He leaned over the railing to look for his hand; it would need to be reattached at the hospital.

Three black heads came out of the canal, their mouths agape, showing silver blades that glinted in the ambient light. One bit down over his head but did not decapitate him, the other two latched onto his shoulders: Jim Waterman was pulled him into the water before he could make a sound.

It doesn't end well for Jim. Oh well, that's what you get for having a minor part in a horror novel.

But back to the pacing. An editor or my high school English teacher would love to attack the last paragraph of the first excerpt. They'd add commas and break sentences up and get rid of most of the "and"s and ... Well, they'd muck with my pacing.

I think a fiction writer can ignore some of the basics of grammar to dictate pace, or even mood. In fiction what matters is, what effect does the writing have on the reader and are you entertaining or enlightening them? I don't seek to enlighten, I seek to entertain. I think I do that well.

Don't overdo it, though. If used too much it can tire the reader and/or lose its effectiveness.

Wizzy And The Traffic Light

Frank got the call from dispatch at one, just as Doris sat his burger down on his table. He listened to the message, but was sure he’d misheard so he thumbed the radio button and said, “Come again, Thelma? I didn’t copy that.”

Thelma repeated the message, Frank thumbed the radio off and said, “Well, shit. Wrap this up to go, would you Doris? I got a call.”

“Damn, Frank. I woulda put it a bag for you if you’d asked. Now I got another plate to wash.”

Frank gave Doris ten dollars, said “Keep the change, for all your trouble” and left Wilber’s Diner, climbed into his old Jeep Cherokee and headed into town.

Buckley, Montana, population two hundred, had one traffic signal, out front of the post office, which also served as the library and video rental store. Across the street was a Shell station.

Frank parked behind the Shell, crept around front and peered across the street at the post office. A rifle fired, the crack echoing across the street. Frank ducked behind a gas pump, though better and ran into the Shell’s office where he found Lenny, who owned the gas station, crouching behind the counter.

“What the hell, Frank?” Lenny said.

“How long’s he been there?” Frank said.

“Sonabitch’s been shooting that twenty-two of his for a half hour now! He’s gotta be drunk. Goddamn, who sold Wizzy booze?”

Frank raised his head and peered through the window. “There ain’t but one store in Buckley, Lenny. Who’d you think sold it to him?”

“Henry knows better than that, don’t he? Don’t he know why Wizzy can’t have no booze?”

“You’d think, after what happened last Thanksgiving.”

“And the Fourth of July.”

Frank crept to the door and yelled across the street, “Wizzy, this here is Frank. What the hell you doin’?”

After a pause, a voice echoed back, “Frank, don’t you try nothin’! You stay put ’till I’m done!”

“Wizzy, for God’s sake, put the twenty-two down and come on out before someone gets hurt. You don’t want no one to get hurt, do you Wizzy?”

“You shut up, Frank! I can’t take this no more and I mean to end it right now.”

Another rifle crack, and a bullet caromed off the traffic light’s metal casing, making it swing back and forth above the intersection.

Frank ducked back into the office and said to Lenny, “It’s the stoplight, ain’t it? He’s shootin’ at the stoplight. Goddamn Wizzy.”

“Wizzy’s a good shot,” Lenny said. “Best in the county two years straight. He shoulda’ hit it by now. He’s already fired seven or eight times.”

“When Wizzy’s been drinkin’, he couldn’t shoot an elephant if he was sittin’ on it.” Frank blew out a breath. “Well, I suppose if he can’t hit the stoplight, he can’t hit me, either.”

Frank went out front again, this time as far as the street. With hands on hips, he hollered, “You come out now, Wizzy! Just lay the rifle down and come on out. We’ll forget this whole thing happened.”

“Like hell, Frank! Every time I come to town that damn light is red! Every time! You hear me Frank? I spent half my life sittin’ at that damn light, and I ain’t gonna do it no more.”

“Wizzy, we only got one stoplight. Now come on, you’re scarin’ Lenny.”

Wizzy’s twenty-two cracked again and Frank ducked, but didn’t run. “Goddamnit Wizzy!”

Frank could hear Wizzy muttering and swearing as he reloaded the single-shot rifle, then thought he should’ve charged him after he’d shot; he might’ve grabbed him before he reloaded.

He opened his mouth to holler when the rifle cracked again. This time sparks flew off the stoplight and glass tinkled down to the street. The light blinked a few times, then went out.

Wizzy whooped and laughed, came out of the post office, laid the rifle on the sidewalk and said to Frank, “I ain’t never gonna sit at that damn light agin, I tell you what.”

“You’re the dumbest drunk I ever saw, Wizzy,” Frank said. “Not only do I gotta haul your ass to jail for distrubin’ the peace, you’re gonna hafta pay for that light to be fixed. I bet it’ll cost you three hunderd.”

“I ain’t payin’ fer no light what has a red part. I tell you what, Frank. I ain’t.”

This will be me one day. When I snap, it’ll be over the damn traffic lights. They’re always red. How much of that is a man expected to take?

Much thanks to Wizzy for letting me borrow his name for this short story. Wizzy’s a colorful character from my book, THE MIGHTY T. He’s been great to work with.

P.S.  Here's the link to my other Wizzy post:  << Click here >>

Back Story and Flawed Characters

Think this guys has some character flaws?

He dated enough to quell most rumors he was gay. Sex was okay but too messy, too intimate. And sex usually took place in the bedroom, where shoes are kept. Daniel had eighty-two pairs, a fact he preferred to keep private. He was sure that once a woman learned he had a thing for shoes she would leave and tell him to never call again. Few people saw the inside of his apartment and no one, ever, went into his bedroom.

All-in-all, Daniel Lawless was an odd man with strange passions, but not so strange that he couldn’t fit in. He discovered he could have his shoes and his music so long as he enjoyed them quietly. He was content and prepared, if necessary, to live out his life alone.

He was not, however, prepared in any way for the horror that was descending upon him and the people he had sworn to serve and protect. Modesto needed a Dirty Harry, a man of action who carried a big gun he wasn’t afraid to use, but what they got instead was Daniel Lawless, a man who carried a small gun he preferred not to use, a man who liked shoes.

When I completed CANALS, it weighed in at a hefty 200,000 words; a bit much. It was the first novel I’d completed and I thought I was the new Stephen King.

In CANALS, I did something authors are strongly advised not to do: I dumped all of my main character’s, Daniel Lawless, back story into one chapter; an “info dump,” they call it. When editing, I chopped a lot of the back story out, but left it together. I split the back story up in my second book, THE MIGHTY T. I think the story flows better that way because when you give back story, you’re interrupting the plot and you want to keep that to a minimum.

What is back story? It’s when an author explains what happened before the timeline of the book. It’s usually used to explain why someone is the way they are, why they’re motivated to do whatever they’re doing in the book.

In CANALS, Lawless is a cop who’s always mindful of what’s happening to his shoes. He kicks a dirt clod in frustration, and immediately regrets doing it because it left a mark on the leather. When he’s finally alone at the scene, he pulls a small shoeshine kit out from under the front seat of his cruiser and makes a quick repair, buffing the mark out. That behavior is a bit odd, don’t you think? I do.

Characters with quirks, or flaws, are more interesting than characters who’re perfect, or think they’re perfect. Which reminds me of a story . . .

When growing up, my older brother (and my only brother) appointed himself the family narc. I’m fifty-four now so I’ve forgotten most of the times he ratted me out, but two memories remain.

When I was about five, our family had a burn barrel for trash; we burned all our paper trash on designated burn days. I was a budding arsonist then and had been warned that if I was caught near a fire again I’d get a whooping. Some time later, on a burn day, I noticed the fire was going to go out before all the trash was burned, so, to help the family, I stirred the fire with a stick so all the paper would get consumed. I was just trying to help, right?

My brother saw me and said, “You’re not supposed to play with fire. I’m telling.” Rat! I’d hoped my mom would do the whooping because her whoopings barely hurt, but no such luck. Shortly before my dad got home, I hid in the back of the closest, which was a mistake as it made him madder to have to hunt me down and pull me out.

(Mind you, if we kids were whooped, it was always on the bottom. His paddle of choice was a foot-long ruler from New Zealand, made of ridiculously hard wood apparently only found in that country. I wanted to throw it in the burn barrel . . .)

Flash forward to age twelve-ish. I had a Daisy BB gun I used to keep the bird population in the neighborhood in check. I was told to stop shooting birds, but how could I? I was sure they were plotting to take over the block by pecking out our eyes. My brother saw me shoot a bird and ratted me out. I was relieved of my BB gun.

My friends and I used to call him “Mr. Righteous,” because he thought he was the conscious of the family. We mostly disliked him. He’s a great guy now, though. A really great guy. Go figure.

When writing Lawless’s character, I wanted the reader to think he had no chance against the monster. He’d always avoided conflict when he could; he wasn’t a womanizer, at all; he liked shoes; he drank wine instead of beer and hard liquor—he wasn’t a macho cop. And here comes this monster, an unstoppable killing machine. An impossible setup.

Modesto needed a Dirty Harry, but what they got instead was Daniel Lawless, a guy who liked shoes. Can he rise to the occasion? You’ll have to read CANALS to find out.

Character Description: How Much Do You Want?

Inside, a man sat behind a laminated wood desk tapping away on a computer keyboard with thick, stubby fingers, his eyes glued to the flat panel screen. The walls of the office were covered with framed photographs of canals and dams from different eras. A descriptive title under the frame of one read “Fresno Scrapers.” It showed mustached-men posing by a horse-drawn contraption with a long metal blade while standing in a wide, shallow dirt trench he assumed was an early canal. There were pictures of big dams, little dams, dirt canals, and cement-lined canals. Lawless couldn’t see anything personal on the walls or desk.

McFrazier glanced up and jumped when he saw Lawless.

“Sorry. Didn’t see you come in.”

He stood and reached over the desk to shake hands. Ralph McFrazier was a stout, hairy man with thick arms and wide shoulders, dressed for summer in an open-collar short-sleeved white cotton shirt and lightweight cotton pants. Lawless imagined something ugly but comfortable on his feet, like Clark’s; he didn’t look like a loafer man. He had a full beard, heavy eyebrows, and bristly hair on top of his head. Thick, dark curly hair covered his forearms and the back of his fingers, tickling Lawless. More dark hair burst out of his shirt at his throat, reminding Lawless of the way a plant will curl and twist to get more of itself into the sunlight.

“Ralph McFrazier,” he said as they shook hands. His voice was gruff, and Lawless thought he might be smiling but it was difficult to tell through the hair.

“Detective Daniel Lawless. Nice to meet you, Mr. McFrazier.” Lawless expected to have his hand crushed, but McFrazier’s grip was soft, almost effeminate.

“Call me Ralph. Mr. McFrazier was my father. Sit down.” He waved a furry arm at a worn chair behind Lawless and sat back down. He talked in short bursts, like a machine gun.

“I’d like to talk to you about Jose Sanchez,” Lawless said, pulling out his notepad. 

“Yes. Terrible thing. What happened?”

“We’re not sure yet. The coroner’s doing the autopsy today. We hope to know more.” 

“No clue yet?”

“Afraid not.” Lawless found himself talking like McFrazier, and didn’t like it. “I understand he worked for you.”

“Somewhere down the line. His direct supervisor is Jake Franklin. He can tell you more.” 

Something beeped: McFrazier glanced at his computer screen and hit a key. The beeping stopped.
“Can you tell me what he was doing out there so early?”

“Can’t tell for sure. Probably checking a gate.” 

“Gate? What kind of gate?”

“Irrigation gate. Lets the water out. They get stuck. The farmers complain.” McFrazier turned his palms up, shrugged, and rolled his eyes.

“What tools does he use?”

“Wrench. Drill. Small stuff.”

“Does he use a chainsaw, anything like that?”

McFrazier frowned. “No. He doesn’t work on trees.” He looked at his watch, barely visible through his arm hair, and said, “Lunch time. Got an appointment. See Franklin. He can tell you more.”

He stood and stuck out his hand again, indicating their talk was over.

Since you’re a reader, let me ask you something: do you like characters whose physical descriptions are laid out for you in the text, or do you like to fill in those details yourself? Or is your preference somewhere in between?

I’ve read all of Johnathon Kellerman’s “Alex Delaware” novels. He likes to describe his main characters’ physical attributes in detail, especially the clothes they wear. He names designers, styles, and brands I’m not familiar with so it doesn’t help me picture the character at all. They’re extra words to me, and frankly, they make me feel a little naive. Like I should know the names of popular designers.

One of my favorite authors, John Sandford, uses a lighter hand when describing his characters. He might spend one paragraph, maybe two sentences.

My wife reads nothing but romance and romance-mystery. It’s tough to get her to read anything but Nora Roberts. She likes some physical description; color of eyes and hair, full or thin lips, height, fit or flabby, etc. She likes to be given mind pictures instead of making them up herself.

I think physical description is very important to the romance genre, and maybe to most genre fiction. And there are lessons to be learned here.

Like John Locke, John Sandford has written that he knows his reader demographic well: mostly women read their books so they write their main male character in a way women find attractive. 

I’ve not read any of Locke’s books but this is what he’s written about his MC Donovan Creed: 

“With my character, Creed, I want to give you a guy who is hard to like, then force you to like him. Women make up 75 to 80% of my audience, and those in my target group get the fact that what Creed really needs in his life is the right woman. My readers are the right woman for a guy like Creed, and when they see him saying something dumb, or making a bad decision, they shake their heads and laugh—because every one of my female readers is smarter than Creed when it comes to relationships, and they know it. They think he’s rough, but worth saving.”

Sandford wrote Lucas to be appealing to women: big and tough, rich with a fancy car, likes women—a lot, has a dark dangerous side (the bad boy), dresses well, etc.

The description of Ralph McFrazier, a minor character in CANALS, at the beginning of this post was too long and largely unnecessary. This is his only scene; why spend so many words describing him? I think I did a better job with the MC in CANALS, Daniel Lawless, giving out snippets of description interwoven through the beginning of the book. 

In the future, while writing genre fiction, I think I’ll describe people with a light hand, maybe try and “show” looks through dialog or action instead of narrative: “After Amber’s eyes adjusted, she saw Grant in the booth. Male heads turned and interested eyes tracked her as she walked through the bar.”

Do You Have A Brand?

   I began writing CANALS in 2004. I dragged myself out of bed every morning between five and five-thirty, booted up an old Windows 95 PC in the spare bedroom, and sat and forced myself to write. Writing almost every day, it took five months to complete the first draft.

   Writing CANALS was an experience I’ll always cherish. I thought I was going to be another Stephen King so I wrote CANALS the same way King writes, in the style he calls “a found thing” in his book On Writing. Other writers call it “by the seat of your pants” writing. I started with a premise but no plot.

   Countless times I sat at the computer, when it was pitch black outside, with no idea what would happen next. I’d force myself to type something, just to get started, and then an idea would come and off I’d go, galloping up to the next roadblock. It was thrilling.

   I edited the manuscript a couple of times and thought it was ready for primetime. It weighed in at 200K words. A bit long, I know, but I’d read many King books that were twice that and I like long reads.

   Sure my book would be snapped up by an eager publisher, I dreamt of large advances, book tours, appearances on The Tonight Show, and a vacation home on Maui. Most of all, I dreamt of a full-time writing career. I’d be like Dean Koontz and buy a house overlooking the ocean, with a writing room on the third floor.

   Out went the query letters, printed in 1200 dpi on fine stationary. I got an early hit; they asked for three chapters! The rejection letter must have been in the mail the same time as the sample chapters. I thought later a new intern likely asked for the pages as the info I had on the publisher said they didn’t publish books longer than 90K words.

   I received about twenty-five rejection letters, most tenth-generation photocopies--tacky and impersonal. One publisher sent a nice letter stating he liked the concept and was interested but the manuscript needed editing. The story “told” more than it “showed.” I had no idea what he meant but by then had given up. The digital file was backed up to a USB drive and the printed manuscript was banished to a shelf in the garage.

   Never at any time have I thought CANALS wasn’t a good story. I just thought I was a lousy salesman. Which I was.

   I was sure it was the genre; few publishers and agents list an interest in horror. And check out the bestseller lists, you rarely see a horror book in the top ten.

   Four years later I decided to write another book, this time a thriller. In fact, I told myself I would stick with the genre. Instead of wanting to be Stephen King, I now wanted to be John Sandford, my favorite thriller writer.

   I’ll save the story for my writing THE MIGHTY T for another day.

   I queried for THE MIGHTY T. While waiting to hear back from agents and publishers, I thought I’d resurrect CANALS now that I thought I knew a lot more about writing. Sure it’s length was a hindrance to it being published, I edited with a heavy hand and got it down to 145K. A lot of bad bloat was cut, words and scenes that added little or nothing to the plot.

   I queried for CANALS again, even tried to reconnect with the editor who’d written the personal letter. He was no longer there and Google had no idea where he’d gone.

   With an impressive pile of paper rejections, and a few megabytes of email rejections, for both manuscripts, I was discouraged and dejected. This would’ve been late 2009. I knew little about ebooks then and nothing about self-publishing other than I’d read agents and publishers look down their noses at writers who self-publish. Why I was concerned about what people who had no interest in my work thought of me is anyone’s guess.

   Then, in February 2011, I found Smashwords and eventually Jack Konrath’s blog, which I devoured. I bought Konrath’s philosophy, as well as John Locke’s, on how to successfully self-publish. I have a two-page crib sheet from a few Locke blogs and interviews I’ll throw up some day. Very enlightening.

   I decided to publish on Smashwords and chose to publish CANALS first. It would be my practice book. Once I learned the ropes I’d publish THE MIGHTY T and yank CANALS. Remember, I’d chosen to be a genre thriller writer; I thought it would be bad for thriller readers to find a horror book with my name on it.

   Is there a point, Everett, or does this post ramble on forever?

   The version of CANALS I published in March, 2011, while far better than the version I tried to get publishers to buy, was inferior to the version that’s now for sale. The editor was right: I had way too much telling and not nearly enough showing.

   Here are my points:

1. CANALS shouldn’t have been published in March. It’s not fair to ask people to pay for something that’s not polished. I apologize to the people who paid for that version, all five of you.

2. I’m flip-flopping on the “I’m a genre writer”. I’m currently writing a second Grant Starr thriller but I have no idea if I’ll write nothing but thrillers after that. This flip-flopping has me troubled. I’m not convinced it’s good for marketing.

   Here’s my question: If you’re a writer, have you defined your “brand”? Do you think having a brand is even important? I think it makes marketing your writing a lot easier.

Native American Rivalry Over Hetch Hechy

John Muir with Yosemite-Mono Paiute, circa 1901

“Miwuk girls are ugly,” Paul had told Jack, after taking a seat on Jack’s porch and popping open a can of Coke he’d found in Jack’s fridge. “I was hoping to get a date but the girls looked like your dog.”

Jack’s dog, an old mongrel, got off the porch and disappeared around the corner of the house. Paul watched the dog go and said, “A couple looked like your dog’s ass.”

“Now look what you did,” Jack said. “You insulted my dog. Go apologize.”

Paul drained half the Coke. “Hey, I heard a new joke. Want to hear it?”

“No.”

“So, some Miwuks were celebrating in the corner of a bar one day and they were shouting, ‘Forty-one days! Forty-one days!’ So the bartender’s watching them, and more Miwuks come in and join the celebration. The bartender finally gets curious so he goes over and says, ‘Why are you celebrating, shouting “forty-one days, forty-one days?” ’ ”

Paul takes another hit from the Coke and delivers the punch line: “A Miwuk holds up a ten-piece puzzle box and says, ‘The box says four to six years, but it only took us forty-one days!’ ”

Paul roared, and Jack smiled, despite his best effort not to.

“I don’t know why they hold that festival every year,” Paul said. “All they do is eat shitty food and play those stupid hand games, and dance around like it was still the 1800s.”

“Because young assholes like you have to be taught what it was like before the white man stole our land.”

Paul snorted. “That was even before your time, Uncle. You got to let that shit go. You know what was weird, though, there was a crazy white guy there dressed up like a Miwuk, in that stupid outfit that makes them look like chickens. He was dancing with the Miwuks, which means he was acting like an ass.” He laughed again.

Paul helped himself to another Coke, drained half of it and belched. “You should have heard the shit he was laying out. He was saying the white man killed the Tuolumne River and cheated the Miwuks out of their rights, or some shit like that. Like the Miwuks ever owned the Tuolumne River.” Paul laughed. “He’s white, but he thinks he’s an Indian.”

Jack, who had been thinking about Hetch Hetchy and working his way toward a nap when his nephew dropped in to drink his Cokes, was now wide awake. He said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know what’s so stupid? Of all the Indians a white guy could pretend to be, he picks the Miwuks.” Another round of laughter.

Is there really a rivalry between the Miwuks and Paiute (Jack and Paul are Paiute) and do the Paiute look down their noses at the Miwuk as depicted in this scene?

From my research, probably not. At least not today. They might have been hundreds of years ago, when their paths crossed. That wasn’t likely because the Paiute lived primarily in the high country while the Miwuk stuck to the valley and foothills. The Miwuk in the valley lived in mud huts and were called “diggers”, and were considered extremely lazy and indolent by white settlers (invaders?).

The Paiutes were proud warriors; the Miwuk, not so much. The Paiutes’ last successful defense of Hetch Hetchy was against the Big Creek Band of Miwuks, who were repelled and driven back into the foothills.

The Paiutes didn’t live in Hetch Hetchy year-round, they migrated through it seasonally to gather food such as pine nuts, which could be stored for the winter. It was also a place of refuge for them, a sacred valley. When the 1872 the Lone Pine earthquake rocked Yosemite Valley (Hetch Hetchy is Yosemite’s little sister) causing massive rock slides, five hundred Paiutes were spotted in Hetch Hetchy.

I’ve taken literary license in this scene to show how the old Paiutes first heard of John Lightfoot. Paul’s joke about the Miwuks and the puzzle is an old one I Googled into; one Native American group really used it to make fun of another. I guess rivalries still exist. 

Hetch Hetchy Valley before being flooded.

My name is Everett Powers and I’m a writer.

That terrifying scream you hear? Me being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital era.

I’m the guy who resisted getting a cell phone for years because, well, I don’t like talking on the phone. Now I have an iPhone 4. I still don’t like talking on the phone, but that damn thing has all but replaced my laptop. I’d rather use Hootsuite on it than on my desktop; no distracting columns cluttering up the screen.

Now I’m on Facebook and I’m Tweeting. “God help us!” screams my dinosaur DNA.

I started my first novel, The Healer, fifteen years ago. Wrote about two hundred pages. I saw it last month, in a box in the storage room. I thought, I should check this out. Maybe I can do a quick edit and, you know, publish it. I read three pages and put it back in the storage room. May it never see the light of day again.

Then I wrote Canals seven years ago. It weighed in at 200,000 words; who did I think I was, Stephen King? It published at 135,000 words. I filled a green garbage toter with unnecessary sentences, paragraphs, and pages. (Canals is a horror novel.)

I finished The Mighty T—a thriller—two years ago: Coming soon to Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Smashwords, etc. Paperback later.

Self-publishing

A pile of rejection letters and emails from agents and print publishers on my desk, I summoned my friend Google.

I said, “Google, can I publish my own novels?” 

Google paused for a nanosecond, then spit out a couple million links. One of the first was Smashwords. Alarms clanged and birds chirped and a squad of cheerleaders... cheered. Really. (It was that sadist Mark Coker who told me I had to use Twitter and start a blog! [Get his excellent free marketing guide.])

Then I found Joe Konrath’s blog, then a ton of great people on Twitter, some very good blogs written by some very good writers...

And here I am. Writing. Something I love doing. On a blog, on Twitter, on a forum... Writing is writing.

My biggest fear? Boring people. 

Someone hack into Google and delete my account if I ever get boring. Please.

I’m running solo with the blog and Twitter (My wife is doing the Facebook thing for me; come on, learn Twitter AND Facebook at the same time? Liquefied brains would ooze from my ears.) so any suggestions for widgets and... stuff, are greatly appreciated. 

I figured out how to add a page to my blog—amazing—and have uploaded (correct term?) the cover for The Mighty T with a brief but exciting excerpt. Check it out.

And follow my blog, if you please. Twitter, too. You follow me, I follow you—we shall promise not to bore each other. 

See you on the cloud!