About Me

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Procrastination Proclamation

I love putting stuff off until tomorrow that I know I will wish I had done today. This applies to writing as much as anything else. It's a double-edged sword though. What I write tomorrow will be better than it would have been had I written it today, but it will be worse than what I would be writing tomorrow if I had just bitten the bullet and written what I'm going to write tomorrow today. Does anyone have a headache besides me? 

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Writing a Novel: best get rich quick scheme yet. Just ask someone who's done it.

Great post yesterday by Larry Brooks at StoryFix.

http://storyfix.com/help-wanted-hiring-fiction-writers-now

Not very encouraging to those of us who would like to make some money writing books, but a good dose of reality comes in handy every once in a while.

Two kinds of people should definitely read this: 

  1. people I owe money to that think they are going to collect because I have published a book, and 
  2. people who owe money to me who think they no longer need  to pony up because I have published a book. 

Sunday, October 27, 2013

New Synopsis for Speedster



I rewrote the synopsis for Speedster, hoping to better convey the things I think make it stand out from the crowd without giving too much away about the plot. Tell me what you think.

At 48, Jack McCain is beginning to resemble the antique Auburn Speedster his grandfather left him years ago. Sleek, classy, and powerful in its day, the car is now an anachronism that needs to be sheltered from the harsh realities of its environment to prevent its slipping into an ignoble dotage.
Jack would like nothing better than to keep himself garaged and under wraps next to his Speedster, but fate has conspired against him. Driven to distraction by a manipulative ex-wife, an insensitive girlfriend, and an epic mid-life crisis, Jack finds himself the chance owner of a customized import car. Hoping to sell the car, he joins a car club run by a bunch of twenty-something tuner punks who don't seem to know very much about cars. When one of the members, a beautiful tomboy who happens to be an exotic dancer, follows him home his life begins to spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, a screwball collection of villains including a pair of neon-haired underachievers, a serial sexual predator, and the owner of the gentleman's club called Glitters, scheme to separate Jack from the valuable Speedster. They want to sell it to launch a black tar heroin enterprise on Florida's posh Lower East Coast. They will stop at nothing to get it. Fueled by their spectacular and often hilarious ineptitude, they mire themselves and Jack in a predicament that seems more and more hopeless as it unfolds.

When a murderous deviant named Mateo abducts two women to force his hand, Jack must shake his malaise and come to grips with the boredom and indecisiveness at the root of his troubles. He enlists the help of his best friend, Mike, to rescue the women, but even a bagful of guns and the best of intentions are not enough it seems against a resourceful and determined foe. Tensions rise and bodies fall, from the walled mansions of Palm Beach to the mangrove labyrinths of Florida's Gulf Coast, as events race to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.