Wearing Donnie Torr: guest post by Roberto Scarlato.

Readers, I've been busy with the end-of-the-semester grading, finishing up proofreading edit checks for the AmazonEncore version of Faking It, and spreading the word about the launch of Why I Love Singlehood (that's right, it's here!).

Fortunately, when it comes to updating my blog, I have help.

Roberto Scarlato is like me--he loves to talk about the writing process, how an idea moves from conception to fruition, and all the love, blood, sweat, and tears that go into that process. So, here is Rob to tell you all about his latest book, Wearing Donnie Torr. Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of the post--his books are available on both Kindle and Nook for the bargain price of 99 cents!

When I first sat down to write this book, I had a prepared outline for fifteen chapters. But the original idea came out like a shot in the dark. It's been over a decade since I came up with the idea of Mr. Dead Eyes, a supernatural medical thriller of sorts. In that story, a character just barged into the pages. That man is Thomas Wilker, an unconventional detective with somewhat questionable methods. But, by one degree or another, he always links one clue to the next and eventually tracks down serial killers. He's a gruff, hairy, Italian, over the hill detective who, and I didn't know this at the time, was spawned from my father. Like my father, this new character interested me and I ended up finding out more about him while writing the story. In one scene, on a plane headed for California, Thomas has an impromptu chat with a nosy passenger to his left. The man observes a ghastly scar on the detective's hand. Thomas, noticing this, tells the man the horrid tale of how he got the scar: from trapping a serial killer in Wisconsin.

That got the ball rolling. In 2002 I started mapping out details of the plot and began writing it. Sometimes I stayed up all night just to write. It went smoother and filled in the down times while I was still working on Mr. Dead Eyes. I've always enjoyed the idea of cross overs. Now I was toying around with the idea of a newer boogieman, something wicked in the woods.

The idea also spawned from the fact that I had an unhealthy bond with my own black leather jacket. I wore that thing for the look, sometimes overdoing it by wearing it in the winter or in eighty degree weather. Some of my friends questioned if they would ever see me without it. They called it my Second Skin and in a way it was. That got me to thinking those explosive What If's...

What if an ordinary guy had a leather jacket with the killer's spirit still in it?

What would happen if he put it on?

What would he do if he couldn't take it off?

What would you do if the killer was you?

Even typing it brings back that old chill. I'm happy to say that the book is now finished, up on Amazon and, thanks to the Search Inside feature, you can now read the first 20 pages of this supernatural thriller. It's 336 pages long, has an author's note, and a special sneak preview of what I'm working on right now. It'll be an action/adventure/mystery in the same vein as National Treasure but on a much smaller scale. I'm also well into my second short story collection which I should be wrapping up soon.

Be sure to check out my process on my own blog robertoscarlato.blogspot.com.

Wearing Donnie Torr - Back Cover Summary:

Deep in the Wisconsin woods, a killer waited patiently. On a cold night in 1999, the notorious Donnie Torr went down in a hail of gunfire. The threat to the town was supposedly eliminated. Now, in 2002, local writer James Dorrell has just purchased a leather jacket at the thrift store. He knows its getting colder, bleaker as the weather grows gray. But what he doesn't know is that the killer lived on, connected to the very vessel of the jacket that James now owns. With the leather fusing to his skin, his thoughts being perpetrated with malicious fantasies, and his sudden habit of sleep walking, James must discover how the killer accomplished such a curse and why he chose James to do his bidding. Better yet, James will have to figure out an ending for this horrifying tale...that might be his own.

For now, that's all I got, folks.

Mr. Dead Eyes, For What It's Worth and Wearing Donnie Torr are available on Amazon Kindle as well as The Barnes and Noble Nook for the low price of 99 cents.

a writer gives thanks

A writer gives thanks...

...when the writing is going well. Those days usually come in spurts, and are sporadic.

...when the writing is not going well. That's when we get all our housework done, catch up on correspondence, clean out the closets, and take long walks. And then, in the middle of all that, an idea, an image, or a voice appears.

...when the voices in our heads get louder. It's not a sign of insanity, but rather that it's time to begin a new novel, or story, or play, or film, or essay, or poem.

...when the voices quiet down. That means it's time to sleep. Or revise.

...when we call the work "finished" (even though, in our minds, it's never really finished). Mentally, we may feel like we've just given birth. But we also celebrate as if we've just given birth.

...when our writing goes not into a drawer, but into the hands of a real live reader.

...when a reader lets us know that s/he loves what we've written. Our hour, day, week, month, year is made.

...when a reader lets us know that s/he hates what we've written. We now have the inspiration to write a story about a character who gets a piano dropped on him/her. Or has to sit through a marathon of the worst sitcom episodes ever. Or has to drink that cherry 7-Up. Flat.


And, on a personal note, this writer (yours truly) gives thanks to (and for) all of you who made this year so fantastic. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

coming soon to a Kindle near you...

I am thrilled to announce that Sarah Girrell's and my novel, Why I Love Singlehood, is available on Amazon for pre-order. The Kindle version is launching December 1st. The paperback version, however, won't debut until May 2011.

Here's how awesome AmazonEncore is: When they first expressed interest in signing WILS, we told them about our intentions to self-publish in time for Christmas. Not only did we want to take advantage of all the people getting shiny new e-readers for Christmas (this year's "Tickle-me-Elmo" for adults, or is that too scary an analogy?), but we also wanted to ride the wave of Faking It and Ordinary World's successful 2010. AE compromised by offering to release the Kindle version in December and the print version in the spring of 2011. And both they (and we) have worked tirelessly to make that happen: copywriting and proofreading edits, design mockups for the cover and interior, promotional text, author pages, etc. Awesome.

I'm a broken record by now, but I can't help it: We're so excited about this book and can't wait for everyone to read it. We love the cover, love its content, and love that it's so close to being born to all of you. We hope you'll download a Kindle copy (if you don't already know, you don't need a Kindle device to do so -- you can download Kindle software to your computer, phone, iPod Touch, iPad, etc.) now and buy print copies for all your friends in May. Or pre-order your print copy now-- that way it'll be like Christmas in May!

Winner!

Congratulations to Elizabeth Brown, who wins the signed copy of Rob Kroese's Mercury Falls! A round of thanks to everyone who stopped by and left a comment--I hope you'll return!

For those who didn't win, I hope you'll buy a copy of Mercury Falls within the next couple of days. Your purchase can help fight Spinal Muscular Atrophy and the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. See details here.

Thanks again to Rob for an awesome guest post!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled writing. Or not.

Write the Novel You Want to Read: guest post by AmazonEncore author Rob Kroese

Readers, if you hear some strange mumbling akin to "Word count, word count, how many words to make word count?" then do not slowly back away... it's just me, busily typing away for NaNoWriMo. The good news is that I'm a quarter of the way through my new novel, and I'm confident I'll make it to 50,000 words by November 30. The bad news is that most of those words are pretty crappy. But that's what makes revision such fun, I suppose. That, and I'm writing the novel I want to read. Not a crappy one, but... oh, you know what I mean.

So, because I haven't had time for much else, my good friend and fellow AmazonEncore author, Rob Kroese, has graciously offered to step in and post something here for you. Rob is having a pretty good November himself so far. Although he's not mumbling things to himself (that is, no more than usual), he's busy promoting the AmazonEncore re-release of his fabulously funny book Mercury Falls, currently shooting up the Kindle Store rankings in both the US and the UK. If you haven't had a chance to sample his work, I highly recommend you do so, be it Mercury Falls or The Force is Middling in this One, a best-of collection of blog posts from his equally funny Mattress Police blog. Rob's books are available both in electronic and print form.

Or, just follow him on Twitter.

Aside from Rob's humor and his infatuation with Huey Lewis and the News, Rob and I share a similar philosophy about writing. Here's his post about how important it is to Write the Novel You Want to Read. Everyone who leaves a comment will be entered in a drawing to win a signed copy of Mercury Falls!

If you're like me, when you finish readin a novel you usually think one of two things -- either:

1) Wow, that was really good. Some day I’d like to write a novel that good.

or

2) Wow, that was really bad. I could write a better novel than that.

Again, if you’re like me, #2 happens quite a bit more often than #1. I sometimes say that good writing inspires me to write and bad writing provokes me to write. Yet while the amount of lousy writing that finds its way to the shelves of bookstores can be a source of encouragement, it’s a mistake to think that if you write a novel that’s better than 90% of the crap out there, it will be a surefire success. The fact is, while quality is certainly an important factor in determining a book’s success, it’s far from the most important factor. There’s only one surefire way to write a bestseller, and that’s to be famous before you write it. Stephen King could put together a book of stories about his visits to the supermarket and it would sell ten million copies. Sarah Palin’s book is outselling the Bible because she’s pretty and she’s been on TV, not because she has anything interesting to say. Yes, Stephen King was once an unknown too, but the point is that as an aspiring author it’s a mistake for you to compare your work to Stephen King’s and think, “My book is as good as that, so a publisher will snap it up and readers will buy millions of copies.” First, it probably isn’t. Second, your book is going to be missing the one element that has been critical to the success of every Stephen King book since Carrie: the name “Stephen King” on the cover.

The good and bad news about marketing fiction is that beyond being a celebrity (or at least a known author), no one really knows what goes into making a successful novel. Look at J.K. Rowling, who is one of the bestselling authors of all time (and the twelfth richest woman in Britain). The first of her phenomenally successful Harry Potter books was rejected by twelve publishers – and that’s after she had gotten a reputable literary agent to represent her. If any of those publishers had had the slightest inkling that the Harry Potter books would be even a tenth as successful as they turned out to be, they would have snapped it up in a second, but they hadabsolutely no idea.

Imagine if you were to take the Hope Diamond to twelve of the most reputable jewelers in New York and not a single one of them would give you a dollar for it. It would make you start to think that the whole profession of jewelry appraisal is a lot of bollocks, wouldn’t it? Now imagine that someone in the know about the jewelry business informed you that most jewelers lose money on most of their sales and only manage to stay in business thanks to a handful of fluke successes. At the very least, you would think twice about trusting one of those jewelers with the success of your own gem. You’d be well advised, in fact, to eschew the guidance of professional jewelers altogether and take matters into your own hands. Replace “jewelry” with “manuscripts” and “jewelers” with “publishers” and you’ll have a pretty good sense of how the publishing industry works (or doesn’t work).

A moment ago I stated that no one knows what causes a novel to be a success, which isn’t entirely true. The one characteristic shared by all successful novels (other than those written by known authors) is that they are books that people tell their friends about. The rub, of course, is that no one knows what exactly causes someone to be filled with the urge to tell another person about a book. Quality helps, sure, but when’s the last time a co-worker brought in a copy of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House or Voltaire’s Candide and said “You have to read this”? What makes people do this with the Harry Potter books and The Da Vinci Code and Twilight? Like most people, I have no idea. But I do know this: for someone to want to recommend a book to other people, they have to be excited about it. And how do you know what people are going to be excited about? The best way to answer that question, in my opinion, is to ask yourself what you are excited about – and then write about that.

This is a critical point. Writers are often told to “keep your audience in mind,” which is good advice – unless, when you think of your audience, you imagine some amorphous crowd of people who fit some particular demographic. If you target your book at 30something college-educated male science fiction fans or 20something white single mothers, you’re going to fail. No one wants to read a book targeted at a demographic. You want your reader to think, as they are reading your novel, “Wow, this author knows me.” How do you do accomplish this? Again, write what you are excited about. No matter how eclectic your interests, there are other people out there like you – and they have friends. Did J.K. Rowling know that there was an untapped market of tens of millions dying to read about British children attending a school of wizardry? Probably not. But she was excited by the idea, and that excitement is infectious.

Don’t write for a demographic. Don’t write for publishers, reviewers or agents. Write for yourself and maybe for that handful of people who really “get” you. Don’t worry about the appeal of your book being too narrow. My novel, Mercury Falls, certainly isn’t for everybody. To be honest, I’m surprised that its appeal has turned out to be as broad as it is, considering that it’s filled with obscure references to everything from Occam’s Razor to Creedence Clearwater Revival to Wargames. What I’ve learned is that, ironically, by intentionally refusing to pander to my audience, I actually made Mercury Falls more interesting for readers outside of what I originally thought was my target demographic. Readers respond to authenticity, originality and excitement, even if it’s not packaged in a way they expect.

I’m convinced that these days being “published” by a traditional publisher is a meaningless detour on the road to being a successful author. The only real advantage to going with a traditional publisher is that you’ll have an editor to help make your book as good (or at least as marketable) as possible. That was the main reason I attempted to go the traditional route before finally self-publishing Mercury Falls. Unfortunately, while I got some positive feedback from literary agents, I just couldn’t get any bites. So I started to float the idea of self-publishing it.

The fascinating thing to me was that the people who screamed “NO! DON’T DO IT!” were themselves aspiring authors who had not yet been published. All of the published authors I knew said, “That’s a great idea. Go for it. Get your work in front of readers and show publishers that you can sell a few thousand books.” Published authors already know that being published ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges associated with self-publishing, but compared with the challenges facing any unknown author, the challenges of self-publishing are nothing.

It’s true that the odds of a self-published book being successful are extremely small. But to say that self-publishing generally results in failure is to confuse cause and effect. The odds of any book being successful are extremely small. Books published by traditional publishers are more likely to succeed because publishers have the luxury of cherry-picking the one book out of a thousand that they think will sell (and they are still wrong most of the time!). Saying that publishers create bestsellers is like saying the NFL creates great football players. The NFL doesn’t create great players; all they do is try to predict which players will be great. Similarly, if a publisher decides to publish your book, it’s because your book has a good chance at success. The difference between writing and playing football is that writing is a solitary endeavor. While a professional football player would have a hard time succeeding outside the NFL, you don’t need the approval of a Big Publisher any more than a marathon runner needs the approval of the National Marathon Runners Association. If you have a book in you, write it.

So, to the question “How do I write a bestselling novel?” I can only answer that I have no more of an idea than anyone else. What I do know is that writing a novel that you’re excited about is a very good first step. If you’re excited about it, there’s a good chance other people will get excited about it – and if one of those people is a literary agent or an editor at a big publishing house, that’s a nice bonus. But don’t write for that faceless agent or editor. Write for yourself.

never say never

About a year ago, I wrote a post about why I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo anymore. But two days ago, I went to the NaNoWriMo website and registered for this year.

Yep, I'm doin' it.

What changed my mind: My complaints haven't changed. I still think the obsessive attention to word count gives way to passive, wordy, and sloppy writing that makes the revision and editing process a pain. But I have not one, but two new novel ideas competing for my attention and my pen. I'm already close to 10,000 words into one of them, so I figured the other one would be worthy of the 50K marathon in 30 days. It's the one that's been consuming my thoughts during my two- and three-mile walks lately, the one that whispers character names and words in my ears while I'm teaching. I want to get it out on the page. And now that WILS is done, the time seems right.

Besides, it might even be fun.

Goin' solo again. Sort of. I'm on my own again, and although I'm happy about that, I confess that it'll feel strange to meet my daily word goals and not automatically send my pages to Sarah. I'll miss the instant feedback, the confidence (and reliance?) in her fixing my suckage, the mutual praise, constructive criticism, and mutual feedback. But NaNoWriMo is a group effort in some ways. The marathon metaphor is appropriate. For as we wend our way along the word-count road, fellow writers and friends stand on the sidelines and support us, clapping and offering us encouragement. Writing is a solitary act, but NaNoWriMo is a community event.

So, in one week, you'll like me find me at my laptop -- be it in my room or at the coffeeshop -- and you'll hear me mutter things like "2000 words behind, I gotta do 4000 today... oy, how am I gonna do it?" (or, in a more positive light, "woohoo--2000 words ahead!") You may hear occasional cursing, you may see a ragged expression on my face. Then again, you may see euphoria, and mistake it for mania.

At any rate, I'll be writing.

I encourage you to do the same. Or just stand on the sidelines and cheer me on.

more good news

If you follow me on Twitter, or Faking It Fans on Facebook (and if you don't, you should), then you know that after three years of writing, reading, revising, editing, patchworking, re-reading, re-writing, re-editing, bunnyhopping (our term for peer review, coined by my good friend and Professor Keith Duffy); after three years of google-chatting, phone calls (sometimes three-four times a week), emailing, and one week in Sag Harbor last December, my writing partner, Sarah Girrell, and I completed our novel Why I Love Singlehood.

Phew.

Our deadline was pushed up when our editor at AmazonEncore informed us that in order to release the book on Kindle (as was our intention), he needed the novel "like, yesterday." (My words, not his.) We were already so close to being finished; but there were still key chapters that needed tweaking. More than tweaking, actually. They needed an intervention. An exorcism. A miracle. (Ok, so maybe it wasn't all that bad. But they we rough.) So we got to work.

I've posted on this blog about the joy that this collaboration has been. Let me tell you, the hardest work came in the final hours, when it was down to the nitty gritty of what to keep and what to cut. After three years, we had our attachments, and one could bet on who wrote what based on how much we were fighting to keep our precious words from suffering the fate of the deletables. (Although there was one line in question in which I argued, "You wrote that one! And you wanna get rid of it?")

We had checklists. We had a system (well, sort of). And in the end, we got it done. 12 hours ahead of schedule, even.

We said "Holy crap" a lot once the documents were sent. We got a little verklempt. We did a happy dance. She made a roast. I made eggs. We announced it to our social networks. All was well.

Thing is, we're going through a little WILS withdrawal now.

Sarah is wandering from room to room, as if she's lost something and looking for it ("Like a purpose," she suggested). I'm feeling the need to email her something--anything--with an attachment. We're out of checklists, outlines, assignments, notes, drafts, and comments. We're DONE.

I don't know if we'll ever collaborate again, or if I could ever collaborate with anyone else. But I am so grateful for the writing experience I've had these last three years -- unorthodox, fun, arduous -- are some of the adjectives that come to mind. I'll miss our bunnyhopping process ("Stephen [King] says to lose the adverbs"; "Holy suckage, Batman!"; "smileys all around"; and so on...). I'll miss us each giving the other credit when the writing was good, and each taking sole responsibility when the writing was bad. I'll miss having her insight, her ideas, her ways of putting words together that I try to steal as my own. I'll miss communicating with her on a regular basis. I'll miss her. I'll miss these characters too, and the world we lived in with them for the last three years.

But it's time to move on. We have new ideas, new characters clamouring for our respective attention, new times and places to explore.

We're looking forward to what's next. We're looking forward to seeing our book on Kindle in December, and in print come April 2011. We're looking forward to others reading it. We're so proud of this novel, and what we've accomplished.

We hope you'll like it as much as we do.