Erotic Noir That Will Leave You Breathless, Author David Sterry

This is the last blog stop for the month, and boy has it been like Grand Central Station around here! Wrapping up the month is a man that makes it his life's work to help other authors get the recognition they deserve, while still finding time to write his own literary masterpieces. With out further adue: Author David Sterry.






 To begin, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

I am the son of immigrants. My great-grandfather was a coal miner in Newcastle. The place you never bring coals to. My mom and dad are in many ways the embodiment of the American Dream. They came to this country with basically nothing but the clothes on their backs, and after 20 years of hard work, sweat and sacrifice, they were getting divorced, totally broke and deep in therapy. I grew up in nice neighborhoods where kids play ball, swung on swings and rode merry go rounds. When I was 17 and briefly homeless, I was sexually assaulted by a large man wearing a shirt that said SEXY on it, then became a sex worker in Hollywood, while attending Immaculate Heart College, studying existentialism with a bunch of nuns. After that, I became a standup comedian, a soccer referee, commercial spokesman for companies like AT&T, McDonald's and Levi's, master of ceremonies at Chippendale's Mail Strip Club in the 80s in New York City, a problematic hypersexualist/sex maniac, had a three picture deal at Disney, acted with everyone from Michael Caine to Zippy the Chimp to Will Smith in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I am an accomplished table tennis player. 

 I help writers get published. Sometimes for money. Sometimes as an activist giving voice to people in our culture who have no voice. The poor, the abused, people who had the shit kicked out of them when they were kids. I have a business called The Book Doctors. I tour the country doing an event called Pitchapalooza. It's kind of like American Idol for books. Writers get 1 min. to pitch their books to a panel of experts. The winner gets an introduction to an agent or a publisher appropriate for their work. Our very first winner's book just came out it's called Love Inshallah, it's an anthology by Muslim American women writing about their secret love lives. It's a fantastic book. I'm very proud of the fact that we were able to help them get that book out into the world. at this time in history I think it's so important that as a race we embrace our similarities, the things we have in common, and the more we understand about people who are different from us, the less we will be inclined to hate on them. I write for the Huffington Post. I'm the one who broke the story about Bert and Ernie coming out for Same Sex Marriage. I am now the author of 13 books, the first of which was a memoir about my Hollywood sex worker days. It's called Chicken. It's been translated into 10 languages and the guy who runs the TV show Dexter just wrote a script from it which is being made into a movie. It's a surreal experience coming up with a list of names of actors who would play me in the movie. They're all much more handsome than me. I just finished reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. She writes the most beautiful sentences. The most exquisite paragraphs. Before that I read the entire Fire and Ice RR Martin thing, and by the seven gods it rocked!

 You have some very exceptional accomplishments; tell me, what made you decide to become an author? 

I have always loved words. Ever since I was a kid. I always loved to write. I was always writing little stories. When I became a teenager I love writing poetry. I love reading for that matter. All different kinds of books. And poetry too. I never knew anyone who was a professional writer when I was growing up. Obvious I knew people wrote books. But I never really considered that as a possibility. When I was a kid I wanted to be a professional athlete. A baseball player. I guess you could say I was kind of a Little League World Series type prodigy. And then I decided to become a professional soccer player. I was offered a contract by the Vancouver Whitecaps. Then I destroyed my knee. Then I decide to become a stand up comedian. And of course I wrote all my own material. So that was writing a very different kind. But it was a great education as a writer. Then I started writing short plays for the theater. They were all under 5 min. I performed them all over New York. Then I was a screenplay writer. And that was great training also. There are only two things you can show in a screenplay. What you see and what you hear. I also kept a journal for many years. I found that was a great way to work out the troubling shit flooding through my brain. After writing many screenplays I finally wrote my first novel. I started it probably 25 years ago. I finally sold it about a month ago. It's coming out in August. I really enjoyed the process of writing prose. A screenplay is just a bunch of symbols in a file until it gets made into a movie. And it's just so hard to get a screenplay made into a movie. Something like 400 movies get released every year. Whereas 250,000 books get published. And that's not counting self published people. A book is something real and palpable. I just enjoy it so much more. Writing stories and books. As opposed to screenplays.

Could you tell us a bit about your book, Confessions of a Sex Maniac?

First of all, let me make this very clear, it is not a memoir. Still, they say you should write about what you know. It's a piece of noir. I was commissioned to write it. I love all those great noir writers, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block. It was so much fun to write. It came out very easily. It's about a low-level bagman working in the seedy groin of the Tenderloin, one of San Francisco's, in fact America's, hardest, rawest, nastiest neighborhoods. He falls under the spell of the Snow Leopard, a woman as spectacular as she is deadly. In the and he has to choose: sex or death?

 You travel all over the country promoting, how do you find time to write?

 I have constructed a life in which I'm able to set aside chunks of time. Mostly I work between the hours of 9 PM and six in the morning. But if I had a regular job I wouldn't be able to do it. I often sleep in the day. But also, I do have an obsessive personality. If I don't write for a couple of days I feel all backed up. Creatively constipated. There's so little I can control of my real life. When I write something, I can control everything. I can make it turn out exactly like I wanted to. And it's such a great joy in finding the perfect turn of phrase, an unexpected way to see something, to illuminate and elucidate something in the human condition. When it's good, it's quite transcendent and invigorating.

What is your writing style like? Do you prefer the organized outline, or the mayhem of freestyle?

 I am a maximalist. The first couple of drafts I write always have too many words in them. I will spit out three different metaphors to describe something. Then in the editing process I combine the three and come up with something that's streamlined and unexpected. I am an avowed enemy of the cliché. I love playing with language and inventing words. I'm drawn to writers who do the same. Irvine Welsh and Ogden Nash. Mark Twain and Dr. Seuss. At the same time, I really don't like writing that is so focused on language that there's no character and plot. To me, the best kind of books are filled with poetic language as well as characters I love and hate and love to hate, and stories that are so good they make me feel sad when the end of the book is in sight. in terms of outline and freestyle, I prefer a balance of both. I was trained as a screenwriter in the Disney system. Before you start writing a screenplay for them, you outline every scene in its minutia, plot out every single beat. It's their way of micromanaging and controlling their products in the most intense way. But again, it was great training as a writer. It's so much easier to write something when you know everything that's going to happen. For myself, I'm constantly making outlines and revising them over and over as I go through the work. It makes it easier actually to improvise. It's like a jazz musician who has a score. There is a melody. That gives you something to go off. Like Coltraine doing My Favorite Things. It's so amazing because you know what the melody is, and you see how he's moving all around it, over it, under it, turning it inside out and upside down, taking your breath away by doing something so magical and unexpected and original, yet still somehow retaining the heart and soul of the original piece.

What is the best piece of advice you can give to aspiring authors out there?

Have 1 million Twitter followers. That's the fastest way to get a book deal right now. I'm working on that myself. No but seriously. Get other people to read your work. As many as you can. I get so many manuscripts that are so half-baked. Hire a professional editor. Someone who's great. Do not give your money to a charlatan. It's like the Wild West out there. Anybody can throw up a shingle and say that they're in editor. Or a self publisher for that matter. Make sure you very carefully investigate anybody in the publishing business before you give them one single penny. Same with promoting and marketing. I once spent $5000 hiring a publicist. I might as well have taken $50 100 bills and set them on fire. Research. Find out who are the people publishing and agenting and reading and blogging about the kinds of books that you write. Support your local bookstore. Go to author events. Join a writers group. Cultivate a tribe of people who are passionate about the same things you are. The first principle of social media is Good Samaritanism.

Lastly, is there anything else you would like to add?

 I think it's the greatest time in history to be a writer. There are many people who bemoan the fact that anyone can now get a book published. Especially old-school publishing industry uppercrusty stick-up-the-butts who swaddle themselves in snoberation. The traditional publishing industry was tragically flawed. It was elitist and exclusionary. A little club that you have to either be born into, buy your way into, or luck your way into. Those days are gone. And I celebrate that. But getting a book published and getting people to read it are two very different things. The good news is that anyone can get a book published. The bad news is that anyone can get a book published. But I think it's so great that we live in a time where any writer can get their ideas and their words out into the world. I have seen over and over again that when people write a great book, work their asses off at networking, due diligent research, and persevere, they can have great success publishing their book.




Follow David On twitter:  @sterryhead 4 twttification

And don't forget to like him on facebook :  http://www.facebook.com/DavidHenrySterry

Science Fiction with a Twist, Author Travis McBee

I have a special treat for all the Sci-Fi lovers out there! Travis McBee, author of the Bridgeworld series graces the front page of my blog today. 

Could you tell us a bit about your self?

Well I’m twenty-two, live in the mountains, and I write books. Wait a second...does that sound cliché? Crap...

Your book Bridgeworld is original and well written, what was your inspiration?

The inspiration behind Bridgeworld came from a book I had read years before called “The Dark Side of Nowhere”. In that book, a boy found out that his small town was really populated by aliens disguised as humans, and he was one of them. I was musing over that book for some reason when I wondered what it would be like if the boy had been forced to integrate back into the alien society his parents were from. I wrote the prequel to Bridgeworld that very day, but it became what I like to call “sketchy” which is a word I use to describe things that get just a little too weird. I became disillusioned with it and shelved it.

A few months later I was tidying up my computer files when I ran across the prequel. The idea behind the story infatuated me again, but I still didn’t want to write a book that was inundated with weird names and strange looking creatures. Then it suddenly hit me: make the aliens human as well. I ‘m not prejudiced against books which do have strange creatures, but to me it would have lost the mystery and wonder of being able to relate to someone going through something as crazy as living on a different planet if he wasn’t human. From there the ideas started spreading like wildfire, including a history of why people ended up being in space. That history wasn’t mentioned until the second book, but I had achieved what I had aimed for, making the idea of the story completely possible under normal laws of nature.

Will there be a sequel to Bridgeworld?

Yes! I’ve already written the second book and it’s scheduled to be released in July. There will be four books in the entire series (unless I decide there should be more of course!)

What is your writing style like? Are you an organized writer or do you like to free write?

It depends on what I’m writing. For short stories I just go for it, but if I’m writing a novel I have to have a very intricate set of notes in front of me. I become distracted very easily so I need an outline to keep prodding me back onto course.

What kind of books do you read in your down time?

I read everything, and I mean everything. I read a lot of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but I also read classical authors like Twain and Stoker. I’ve also read most of Nicholas Sparks books as well (to impress the ladies with my sensitive side of course!). If your going for genres, I hit all of them: sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, romance, horror, mystery. I read young adult as well as adult books. I try to be well read.

Are you reading anything right now, and would you recommend it?

At the moment I’m reading “The Deadzone” by Stephen King. It’s been pretty good—not my favorite but not bad. It’s worth a read if you haven’t read it.  

Do you have any other projects in the works?

At the moment I’m writing a middle grade novel about a boy who uses a haunted house to get back at a bully.

What do you like best about being an author? What do you like the least?

I love talking to people about writing. Writers are passionate about what they do and it seems like that’s rare among people today. I love giving people tips and getting advice from others. It’s also the best feeling in the world when a stranger tells you that they really enjoyed your work. The worst part is the rejection. Men are terrified of rejection, but when you’re an author you get rejected dozens of times.

Any advice for those who wish to become an author?

Keep at it. It’s a lot of work to write a novel or even a quality short story. Don’t give up and never think that you’re good enough, always try to get better. But the biggest piece of advice is cliché but very very true: Don’t do it for the money—you probably won’t get rich—do it because you love it.

And Finally, is there anything else you would like to add?

Just to thank you for having me, it’s been a real pleasure!

 Author Bio: 

Travis McBee was born and raised just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He is the younger of two children and enjoys backpacking, playing rugby, and watching football. He is the author of four novels: Bridgeworld, Bridgeworld: Encounter at Atlantis, Triton: Rise of the Fallen, and Triton: The Call of War. He is also the author of a children’s series: The Chronicles of a Second Grade Genius. He currently resides in Georgia.

Follow Travis On Twitter : twitter.com/travis_mcbee

and Don't Forget To Like Him on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BridgeworldAcademy

One of the most entertaining Interviews I've ever done! Hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did! Until next time, may your Muse be at your side, and your writing the light that guides  you.  

Dawn.

Fiction Writing, Using an Active Voice

Purdue OWL

One of the things I forget so often on this blog is that writing is the most important part of self publishing. I've posted articles on how to do just about everything from formatting for kindle to uploading on Google Play. However I never post on the writing aspect of self publishing. Mostly I do this because it is my assumption that every one who reads this blog already knows how to write. After I got a response back from my editor the other day, I reconsidered this.

 I very seldom write in the third person. Some stories however just need to be written that way. One of the things my editor mentioned to me was that I have trouble using the active voice when writing in the third person. I've taken writing courses, was in honors English classes through out school, and yet still I did it consistently in my latest work. So I thought I would give a little refresher not only for myself but any one else that might be struggling with the same thing.

    A good way to check your work for passive voice is to look for the words, had, has, is and was. Are there a lot of them? If you find sentences that contain those words, can you find a way to reword them? Passive voice is usually unclear and and lengthy. Adding words that don't need to be there and making what is supposed to be happening fuzzy.  Here are a few examples of active vs. passive voice.

A successful project was expected by all the

staff.(passive)

All the staff expected a successful project (active)

The Drawing is being reviewed by Bill. (passive)

Bill is reviewing the drawing. (active)

   In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject of the sentence  performs the action. In a sentence written in the passive voice the subject receives the action.

It's a very simple rule that sometimes we can find hard to stick to, especially when writing in the third person, past tense. The way ninety percent of fiction is written.  For those of you who don't or have never had this problem, my hat is tipped to you. For those of you like me, that find your self falling into this trap, this article is for you.

Til next time, may your muse be at your side and your writing the light that guides you. 

Dawn