My Very First Book Signing: The Afterword

So… My book signing…

First off, let me state that I had a ton of fun! Considering that Ukazoo is a used book store (which I totally recommend, fyi) where people go for bargains, not full-priced books, it wasn’t as profitable as it could have been elsewhere.

Yet I still enjoyed myself thoroughly, and not just because I got Oreo Dream Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory afterward.

For one thing, it was a fascinating adventure in human observation. Apparently, I’m not the only person who can’t stand salespeople. Most customers walked by my nice little table and purposely looked every which way but at me, as if they were terrified that I might rope them into a pointless and pushy conversation if they dared to meet my gaze.

Which, just for the record, I had no plans on doing. The people who did smile back got a cheerful. “Hi, how are you?” and then an appropriate response depending on what they said. If they kept walking, then I went right back to writing in my little notebook.

Incidentally, that little notebook is the second reason why I found yesterday so worthwhile. I wrote almost the entire Author’s Note/Historical Prologue section to Designing America while I sat there. And while I know I’ll be adding bits and pieces here and deleting sentences there, I’m quite content with that first draft. It wrote well and shouldn’t take too much effort to make it read well too.

I did sell one copy of The Politician’s Pawn to an actual customer (and four more to ridiculously adorable family members), and jotted down my information and professional website for another person who wanted the Kindle copy of Not So Human. I also chatted with some very nice and helpful people about such things as how to properly pronounce “Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.”

Incidentally, that mother-daughter duo was very impressed that I said it correctly, though that’s what happens when you live there for seventeen years. You pick up on little things like that.

There was one gentleman who stands out the most, however. When he stopped to eye my table, I asked him if he liked political thrillers or fantasy fiction. He shook his head and said no, so I politely pursued the conversation by inquiring what genres he did like.

He answered, “Oh, you know, books about characters.”

Maybe I should have told him about my historical or Christian fiction stories instead. I’m pretty sure those involve such creative constructions. Not sure… Maybe I should go back and check.

My Crazy, Crazy Thoughts While Stuck on Route 95 Waiting for a Tow Truck

Right now, I’m sitting in my car on the side of Route 95, waiting for a tow truck.

I should clarify… By the time I actually post this blog, months will have gone by since my fateful non-adventure. I’m probably sitting at work instead, hitting the “publish” button and getting myself mentally situated for the work day. Or maybe I’m lounging on a sandy beach with a Long Island iced tea in my hand.

Wouldn’t that be nice…

But I digress.

Sitting here, with my $50 worth of groceries hopefully not dying around me, and my phone charging in my car for a few minutes so that it doesn’t die altogether, I’m very grateful for my laptop. I just finished Kindle-izing “Up in the Air,” the third – but not the last – book in my Faerietales series (available on Amazon in print too.  Hint. Hint), and now I’m blogging.

How much fun is that!

When I called my friendly State Farm helpline, the woman on the other end very kindly warned me to be careful about interacting with anyone who might stop to give me assistance.

My reply? “Oh, don’t worry. I’m a creative writer. I can think up plenty of ways that can go bad.”

She laughed, which is what I intended. (Hey, if you can’t laugh at life, then you’re probably gonna cry.)

Nonetheless, I do have to wonder what would happen if I was one of the hapless characters in my stories. Since I don’t write romance, I suppose there’s no way some gorgeous tall man with dark hair, green eyes and wide shoulders is going to rescue me.

Drat.

More likely I’ll have someone come and kidnap me by mistake for a political plot. After all, I am on 95… a route that Kayla took twice in “The Politician’s Pawn.”

That’s why, when a man with a tow truck that I didn’t order came knocking on my window half an hour ago, offering to give me a cheap tow, I rolled down my window just a little bit and told him thanks, but no thanks.

He was probably harmless. I didn’t get a single creeper-vibe from him. But if my stories have taught me one thing… You can never be too careful.

My momma would be so proud of me.

Stranger Than Fiction: What If My Characters Weren’t Characters at All!?!

There’s this movie with Will Ferrell called Stranger Than Fiction.

I’d say it’s really good for a Will Ferrell movie except that it’s really good for any movie.

Plot, characters, acting, opportunities for introspection: This film has it all. And it’s original too! As far as I know, anyway.

The storyline follows Harold Crick, a thirty-something IRS agent who leads the most monotonous life ever until he’s assigned to Ana Pascal, a bakery-store owner who’s intentionally not filed her taxes properly for years. Naturally, the unlikely pair falls in love, but that’s not why Stranger Than Fiction is so brilliant.

It’s brilliant because of the backstory, which follows Karen Eiffel, a famous novelist who always kills her main characters off at the end of her books. And this time around, her main character is Harold Crick. Only she doesn’t know she’s writing about a real live person.

I own the movie. It’s good enough to watch repeatedly. But it always makes me wonder…

What if my characters were real?

When Karen Eiffel learns that she’s been essentially murdering real people – that she’s a serial killer – she’s horrified. As well she should be. And while I don’t normally kill off the good guys (if she was reading this, my darling mother would point out – with a disapproving air – the three exceptions to that rule), I do a lot of other horrid things to them.

I mean, in the Faerietales series, Sabrina gets terrorized mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically… and by multiple characters. If some poor young woman was really chained to an evil shrink’s couch being questioned at the end of an electric baton because I dictated it?

Than, pretty much, I’m a horrible human being.

The same applies to Kayla in the Dirty Politics series. Evans brought some of the torture on himself, but I still gave him a rotten backstory to explain why he went rogue. (I’m so sorry, Sarah!) And I’ll even admit I’d feel bad for putting Rod through what I did. It’s amusing if he’s just fictional; not so much if he was an actual human being.

When it comes to my historical and Christian fiction stories, I did some serious research for those two. They’re based off of too much verifiable documentation for me to blame my imagination.

But as for my fantasy and political thrillers? Well, I would like to take this moment to express my most sincere hope that reality really isn’t stranger than fiction.

Why Is the HPAC President a Black Woman From Africa?

Here’s a question some people might wonder after reading parts two and three of my Faerietales trilogy… Why in the world did I make the HPAC president a black, African woman instead of like my otherwise very white, Western-World male villains?

Great question, and I have an immediate answer: I have no clue.

The unnamed but very distinctive Madame President was never anything else in my mind. She came into being with the gender and skin color and origins that she did, and I never paused to dispute it.

I don’t plan out most of my characters. Yes, some are based off of specific people, whether friends or acquaintances or public figures. But for the most part, they just kinda come with the physical characteristics and personality traits that they do.

Deanda, for example, was supposed to be based off of my two best friends. Instead, she took on her own sense of self. And neither of the women I originally intended her to mirror have the long, dark, curly brown hair that she does. Or violet eyes. That’s simply the parameters she “was born” with.

Dr. Stewart? He was always a dark-haired, blue-eyed, self-satisfied and very intelligent creep.

And Kyla? I’ve got to admit that I’ve kinda come to associate at least her image with one of the characters from Disney’s Tinker Bell movies (Fawn, for anyone who cares). But she came part and parcel with her delicate frame and confident personality.

I don’t know anyone like her. Or Dr. Stewart, for that matter. The latter of which I’m very happy about.

The same goes for Madame President. I have to say that I’m really rather happy she popped into my head and onto my Microsoft Word doc that way, and not just because the Faerietales trilogy would have been a little too pasty otherwise.

I do like showing that there’s no perfect group out there. Anyone can be bad if they only choose to be. Black, white, male, female, intelligent, slow, North American, European, African… and yes, human or faerie (if faeries existed, which they don’t, of course. I know that. Really). We’ve all got it in us to behave pretty darn rotten when we want to.

Hence the reason why I pick on just about everyone I can in my writing, including both major American political parties (my own included) in my upcoming Dirty Politics series. (Then again, I also pick on both sides because I can’t stand most politicians, whatever letters come before or after their names. But that’s a topic for another blog post.)

So while it does delight me to have Stewart and Morrison kowtowing to a chick, I can’t take any real credit for that fact. Madame President is who she is; there’s nothing more to it than that.

What Doesn’t Kill You Can Go in Your Novel

They say “it takes all kinds” to make the world turn, but let’s face it: That motion could be a whole lot smoother without certain people around.

Like, I don’t know…

·         That person who doesn’t like you for no good reason, as far as you can tell

·         The boss who doesn’t give you a raise or bonus two years in a row without explanation

·         Your ex who really was a nice person but lacked the spine to be honest with himself so that he vacillated about the relationship every other day until you’re forced to break up with him on New Year’s Eve, ensuring an utterly miserable evening.

Not that I have anyone in particular in mind, of course…

Except that I do. Obviously. And yeah, I don’t care for the individuals described in bullet points one and two. As for the third example, well, I sincerely wish him the best despite how he could have saved us both a lot of trouble way back when by making up his mind one way or the other.

Life is filled with such annoyances. And there’s often nothing much to be done about them.

Unless, of course, you’re a writer.

One of the many beauties of writing stories is that you can take the kind of revenge on reality-inspired characters that you could never take in real life. Not to say I go around knee-capping my supervisors or burning down other antagonists’ houses with them in it. I could if I wanted to, but that’s probably going a bit too far. I don’t dislike them THAT much.

However, I have given one little letch I used to work with debilitating stomach cramps. Twice. That’s in “Maiden America.” I don’t regret doling out that batch of poison one bit.

And I portray politicians from both parties as conniving, arrogant lawbreakers with delusions of godhood in my upcoming Dirty Politics series. That round of venting felt pretty good too.

But above and beyond the emotional enjoyment of sticking it to the man or woman or group of people driving me crazy, I can use that real-world experience with negative factors to make my fiction more believable and ultimately entertaining and/or compelling.

Hence the reason why I wrote my dedication to “Maiden America” the way that I did:

This book goes out to the amazing individuals who listened to me 
blather on and on and on (and on) about how cool all my historical 
research on Princeton circa 1776 was. You know who you are!

And also to some particularly obnoxious people of my 
acquaintance, who made for amazingly easy models of irritating 
British officers. I could have done it without you guys, but it 
wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun. 

What Makes an Awesome Book: Reflections After Reading Keith Thomson’s “Once a Spy”

I finished reading an absolutely awesome book the other night: “Once a Spy” by Keith Thomson.

It was so awesome, in fact, that it got me thinking… What really makes a book THIS good?

One of the possible answers that immediately jumped out at me was how the novel featured non-stop drama. Every other second, someone was shooting at someone, it seemed.

Then again, I’ve read novels with action scenes crammed into every chapter… that still bit. (“Pirate Latitudes,” for one, had me wishing everyone would die already from any one of the back-to-back catastrophes so that the book – and my boredom – would end.)

So if that doesn’t do it, then how about entertainment value? I mean, Thomson does pack a snarky punch, throwing around sarcastic quips at the same rate his characters sling bullets. “Once a Spy” is every bit as amusing as it is thrilling.

Though I’ve also read entertaining books before that I haven’t been tempted to label “awesome.” Maybe because they were ONLY entertaining; they didn’t teach me or better me at all.

“Once a Spy,” on the other hand, definitely taught me a thing or two. Let me tell you. Thomson writes like he’s read the Langley handbook cover to cover, throwing in random facts about torture techniques, secret projects from eras gone by, weaponry capabilities… Really cool stuff!

At the risk of being repetitive though, I genuinely don’t think subject matter expertise is the key either when I’ve gone glassy-eyed too many times reading really interesting information conveyed in less-than interesting ways.

So what else is there to consider?

Compelling characters? Check. Unexpected plot twists? Check. Originality? Check.

And I could cross all those off the list too if I didn’t think I’d bore you to death in the process. So for now, I’ll just admit defeat and acknowledge that I don’t know the answer to my question.

What I do know is this: When I read a truly awesome book, I recognize it for what it is. And I’m sure you can say the same thing.

That je ne sais quoi might not be easy to define, but it is VERY easy to spot.

So congratulations to Keith Thomson for “Once a Spy.” I can’t wait to read the sequel!