Generous 5-Star Review of CANALS

I admit I don’t visit Goodreads often enough. Sometimes not for months. But, when I do, I like to see if any new reviews have been posted for my novels. 

I found one today. Here’s the link in case you want to see the original review.

Here’s the text of the review:

Canals starts off as a typical crime thriller as Detective Daniel Lawless comes to the scene of a dismembered body by a canal in California. Everett Powers then develops a wonderful story written in the style of a good police drama. Every character the reader meets is given a full introduction, it is not a case of "this is John, a 20 year old man" - you get to know each character as a real person. This character development is true for everyone, whether they continue to the end of this novel or meet a violent death.

Detective Daniel Lawless is a different type of policeman and has a quirky character. He likes opera and has a collection of 82 pairs of shoes giving him the nickname of shoe boy when he was at school. Before he can solve this death by the canal, another death occurs along a nearby canal. Something is going on around the canal network but can Danny solve the case before more people are killed?

Slowly the reader finds that this is not your typical crime thriller. Little bits of information are drip fed into the story to make you think that something nasty may be lurking in the canals. Bit by bit this story becomes a science fiction novel.

Everett Powers develops a wonderful plot that bit by bit becomes a race for Daniel Lawless to save the day. The reader along with Daniel begins to understand just what is going on along the canals and we begin to get the bigger picture.

Canals is a very entertaining read. I like the way it moved from a crime thriller to a thought provoking science fiction story. The message at the end is very moving and forces you to consider real life global issues.

I can find nothing wrong with Canals. It is a great story that was told with precision and detail. The writing is top quality and it was a joy to read. I enjoy walking my dog along canals and now I will always wonder what may be in the water. I vote this book the top score of 5 stars. Canals is available as a 609 KB Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2011.

CANALS was the first novel I completed and my only horror/sci-fi novel. The Grant Starr novels are thrillers.

CANALS can be purchased for 99 cents right now at your favorite ebook retailer. 

I noticed Amazon is selling the quality paperback for $14.39, though I don’t know why. I never lowered the price from $15.99 and it’s sold only on Amazon.

Finished 1st Draft of The Mighty T Screenplay

I finished the first draft of my adaptation of The Mighty T to the silver screen. It weighs in at 120 pages, about 20 above my goal.

I was advised that new screenwriters shouldn't turn in scripts longer than 90-105 pages, but when I looked at the winning scripts for the recent Nicholl competition, they were all about 120 pages. We'll see how it looks after edits.

Some nuts-and-bolts stuff about my process.

1.  The screenplay resides in Scrivener for Mac at the moment and will until it's ready for submission. Scrivener has a screenwriting mode, which makes it easy to format while you write.

2.  I have Scrivener sync the screenplay onto Dropbox in Fountain format. That way I can work on it on either my iPad or, as I did yesterday, on a PC. Edited documents synced perfectly the next time I load Scrivener. I tried typing a new document using Fountain syntax but Scrivener put it in a trash folder when it synced. I'm not sure why. I copy and pasted the new doc into Scrivener but had to format it line by line. Kind of a hassle.

3.  I wrote with iA Writer on the iPad and Word on the PC. I've used a Mac since March and it was a bit rough going back to a PC. It didn't help that it had a cheap keyboard with poor tactile feedback.

Adapting a Novel to the Screen - Part 1

Page 1, The Mighty T Screenplay

While waiting for feedback from some excellent readers who are reading SUNSET HILL, I decided to try my hand at adapting one of my novels to film; i.e., write a screenplay. I thought, I've written four novels, how hard could it be to write a screenplay for one?

Little did I know...

Screenplays and novels are not alike in the least. Novels can be 350 pages of prose while a screenplay should come in at about 100 pages. And no prose. They must consist of mostly action and dialogue with very little description. If a character must be described, it should be no longer than one sentence.

Peter Stone was the screenwriter for the original The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1976) (Stone passed away on 2003.) He's an Oscar, Tony, and Emmy winning writer. He talked about the differences between writing a screenplay and a novel in the commentary feature on the Charade DVD.

“When I couldn’t sell the original screenplay (for Charade) I was advised by my wife, and my agent concurred, to turn it into a novel. I had never written a novel and it was in the course of writing the novel that I came to realized that I had no ability for writing novels at all. It’s a different set of muscles. There are very, very few people who can write dramatic material and narrative prose. Very few. Chekhov could do it. There are some today who can do it. Richard Price can do it. Crichton. They just call on a different set of muscles. One is descriptive and uses language in a way that dramatic material does not.

Dramatic material—everything has to be revealed through behavior, that’s all you have to reveal it with. And description plays such a small part in it. It’s just a different set of muscles at work and I don’t have them, or I never developed them, or I wasn’t interested in them or something. But I sure discovered it immediately. So it was a rotten novel.” (Emphasis added.)

"A different set of muscles." That's exactly what it feels like to me.

I've decided to adapt The Mighty T for film.

I Googled screenwriting, found a bunch of good information, and talked to a writer I met on Twitter, Katherine Bennet, who is a screenwriter. Alright. Ready to write that screenplay. After I reread the book. It'd been a while.

When I stopped to come up for air, I was 45 pages in. Unfortunately, I was on page 37 of the novel. Yeah, that won't cut it. At that pace I'd end up with a 500 page screenplay, enough for five movies.

Back to the drawing board.

Katherine strongly suggested using Chris Soth's Mini Movie Method: Organize the screenplay into eight "mini movies," each 12-15 pages long. It is supposedly the format Hollywood is looking for in a screenplay. I just couldn't wrap my brain around that format, though. Not for The Mighty T, at least. And, I'm very impressed by the movies coming out of Hollywood these days. Most are terrible.

So, instead, I decided to use the three acts format, with act 2 broken into two parts. I've organized the novel thusly:

Act I - the killing of the utility GMs

Act II, Part 1 - blowing up the Jones Pumping Plant

Act II, Part 2 - blowing up the O'Shaughnessy Dam

Act III - the attack on the Don Pedro Dam

Each act gets about 25 pages. 

The task then becomes, what to cut from the novel? Obviously, much has to be cut. In fact, most of the novel has to be cut. And that hasn't been easy. I've had to cut scenes I really like. It's been a little like having a family of 50 but only being able to take 10 with you on vacation. 

I'm currently into Act II, Part 2, with 54 pages written. (According to Scrivener's page count.) I'm writing the draft for screenplay in Scrivener, because I love it and already own it, but will have to get a dedicated piece of software for the finished product.

I'll post more on the process.

Excerpt from SUNSET HILL

My next Grant Starr thriller, SUNSET HILL, is with the beta readers. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 8.

Grant and Detective Ira Utter of the Seattle Police Department are in Utter’s car heading for a woman’s prison in Gig Harbor where they will interview a convicted killer. Grant is going to try and get the killer to give them the name of her accomplice, who’s started killing again.

Utter is a new character, naturally because he’s in Seattle, Washington, and the other two Grant Starr novels were set in Central California. I didn’t like him much at first because he’s so straight-laced and kind of boring. And, frankly, I didn’t like typing out his name much. But he grew on me and I came to appreciate him, and understand him. His character is in large part his attempt to separate himself from what he was: a drunk.

Grant’s sure the killer they’re looking for is Mindy, who escaped an intense police dragnet after the failed attempt to blow up the Don Pedro Dam in La Grange.

Utter and Grant got into Utter’s department-issued Chevy Impala, and Grant asked Utter, “An Impala, huh? How’d Seattle PD end up with Impalas? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cop driving one.”
“It’s a long story. The short of it is, Chief Dunston’s brother owns a Chevy dealership. They’re not bad cars.”
“I heard they suck.”
“Well ... okay. They do suck. Fortunately, there’s little call for a Seattle detective to engage a suspect in a high-speed chase. We have highway patrol Dodge Chargers for that.”
Grant laughed. “You call in the HP for all car chases?”
“Not all, just the ones where you suspect you might need to go more than eighty. The Impala starts to shimmy at eighty.”
Grant laughed again and said, “How’d the media thing go?”
“Okay. I remembered not to frown.”
“Kept a poker face?”
“Well, it wasn’t like I was being grilled by Mike Wallace or anything. Keely Wolfe asked about you and the others, who you were and why you were here. I said you were consulting because there might a tie-in with a cold case of yours. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t see any harm in it. If you didn’t tell them who we were, they’d think we were feds. That I would’ve been pissed about.”
They swapped stories for thirty minutes until Utter said, “I Googled you this morning. 1970 Ferrari Daytona, huh? From trading stocks?”
“Nah. Short-selling stocks. But I’m out of the game now.”
“Sounds like it was lucrative. And a lot safer than hunting killers. Why not retire and do the stock thing?”
“Because I’d go nuts. Short-selling gave me something to do at night while I dried up. I’d wake up at two or three and flip the computer on, run the numbers instead of reaching for a beer.”
“How long did you drink?”
“Started in high school and didn’t quit until I was twenty-six. Too long, but I know guys who still drink like they did in college, and they’re fifty now.”
“Why’d you quit? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I don’t mind. I had a woman walk out on me. I thought she was the one, but ... turns out she didn’t like angry drunks. Who can blame her? Hell, I don’t like angry drunks.”
“You in AA?”
“Nope.” Grant turned to look at Utter. “Her leaving was enough of a shock that I just quit. Didn’t feel like I needed any help. You sound like you have a story. You in AA?”
Utter nodded and said, “I’m an alcoholic. A recovering alcoholic, as they teach us to say. Unlike you, I can’t touch a drop. Just smelling a beer makes me break out in a sweat.”
“How long you been sober?”
“Five years, sixty-two days.”
“Still go to meetings?”
“Oh yeah. Probably will the rest of my life, or until I’m too old to drive myself there.”
“I guess your marriage survived. Or is this wife number two?”
“No, Lacey hung in there. Probably for the kids’ sake. I think she’ll leave after they move out.”
“Why do you say that? The worst is over, man.”
“The damage has been done, you know? Say you tell someone you hate them and suggest they jump off the Space Needle. You can apologize the next day, but you can’t take the words back. They’ll always be there, floating somewhere in time and space. Some things can’t be undone.”
“Ah, time can heal most wounds, Ira. She’s stuck with you this long, she’s probably gonna hang in for the long haul.”
Utter was quiet for a few moments, then he said, “I think she’s having an affair. In fact, I’m almost positive she is.”
“Ah man, sorry to hear that. You think it’s a revenge thing? Getting back at you for the years of drinking?”
“Could be. I’m thinking about confronting her about it. What do you think?”
Grant blew out a breath, and thought through his answer. “I hate to think I’ll ever have to deal with that, but if I do, I’ll confront her for sure. There are few things worse than someone you love sneaking around behind your back.”
They were quiet for a while, then Utter said, “Did I tell you she wears makeup to Zumba? Who wears makeup to Zumba?”
“Women care about their appearance more than men, even at the gym. In fact, when I used to go to a public gym, most of the women there had makeup on.”
“Zumba lasts an hour, but she’s usually gone two hours. Sometimes three.”
“Ah man...”
“Yeah.”

The Washington Corrections Center for Women was tucked into a corner of McCormick Forest Park, off Washington State Route 16. Utter exited at the Burnham Interchange, wound down Sehmel Drive, then hooked a left on Bujacich Drive, which cut through the park as it led to the prison.
“Sure is pretty country,” Grant said. “Is it always this green?”
“It’s why we’re called the Evergreen State,” Utter said. “This side of the Cascades is always like this. It turns white when it snows, but otherwise is green year round. I assume you’ve got a plan for interviewing Sorrentino? Is there anything you want me to do? Keep my trap shut? Play good-cop bad-cop with you?” He smiled.
“I’ve got a plan, but nothing elaborate. Feel free to jump in if you think you have something to add.”
When they pulled into the prison parking lot, Utter said, “Is there anything you want to ask me about Sorrentino before we go in?”
“I think I got all I need from the files.”

Busy with my paper edit

I've been busy lately with my paper edit. I blogged about this before here.

I edit three different ways:

1) On-screen

2) On paper

3) On an eReader, in my case an iPad

I finished the on-screen editing a couple of weeks ago and am in the 12th chapter of my paper edit. Sunset Hill will have 14 chapters, so I'm almost done. I'll probably do a second paper edit on chapters 12–14. They're the most recently written chapters and so haven't been gone through as much as the others, and they're the most important because... You'll have to wait and see.

I'm pleased I'm finding very few actual typos or incorrect word usages. The most common error to pop up, 3 or 4 times, has been "there're" instead of "they're". And I've changed a lot of "in"s into "into"s.

I write and print manuscripts in Courier, size 11. 12 is too big and 10 is too small. 11 allows for just the right about of text on a line. The paragraphs are 1½-spaced, not double-spaced. I don't need them to be double-spaced.

I'm using a Nakami Vanishing Point fountain pen for editing, with a fine nib. The nib size is just right, allowing me to write more than you'd think between the lines and in the margins. I don't use the plastic cartridges but rather fill it from an ink bottle. The pen is very easy to fill. I use the Delta brand ink, at Bert's recommendation.

The pen looks just like this:

The nib appears when you push the button at the other end of the pen. Otherwise it's safely nestled inside the body of the pen where it won't cause a mess. The pen finds nicely in a shirt pocket and is rather large; perfect for my big hands.

You can buy the pen at Bert's Inkwell, if you like. Don't forget to get a bottle of the Delta Ink. I use blue ink because it's easily seen on a black and white page and is appropriate for all other writing uses. Other colors such as red would be more visible on the page, but you shouldn't write on checks or sign important documents with colors like red. Blue is universal.

I've also used a Pilot Precise V rolling ball pen for editing. (Pilot makes the Nakami Vanishing Point pen as well.) It has a very fine writing point and displays how much ink is left so you know when you're about to run out. But, a fountain pen has so much more class than an ordinary rolling ball pen, and I like to use my expensive purchases when I can.

As for printing the drafts, Scrivener makes it easy. Chapters are set up as folders in Scrivener's Binder display. Each scene is a text file in a chapter folder. In scrivenings mode, where the scenes of a chapter appear as a continuous stream of text, I click File, Print Current Document. On my Mac, the print screen tells me how many pages are in the chapter so I can be sure I have enough paper in my old LaserJet 1320. I buy Georgia Pacific multipurpose paper from Walmart for about $3.50 or so a ream, the 92 brightness paper.

Back to editing.