The Reinvention of Me

By Douglas Corleone

Sometimes failure is a good thing. Although you’d never hear me utter the words “blessing in disguise,” I suppose that’s what you could consider the bad news I received in 2011 when my agent asked my editor whether she’d like to read my proposal for the fourth Kevin Corvelli novel.

“Actually, we’d prefer to see something new from him.”

The moment I heard those words I experienced both a pang of grief and a jolt of excitement. Grief for the series of legal mysteries that I’d spent the last half-decade writing and promoting. And excitement about the possibility of a fresh start. A new series, a new setting, a new hero. Maybe even a new genre. I thanked my agent and promised I’d have an idea to her by Friday.

Truth is, I could have blurted my new idea to her right then and there over the phone. The idea for Good As Gone had planted its seed two years earlier, after reading a one-page article on a real-life private investigator who specialized in retrieving children kidnapped by their estranged parents and taken overseas to countries that don’t recognize U.S. custody decisions. I had immediately envisioned a Taken-style thriller that would transport my new tough-guy hero to exotic locales where he’d be pit against criminals from every walk of life, from Eastern European gangsters to Latin American narco-paramilitary forces.

Roughly a year later the book was written, the contract signed, and I was no longer just an author of quirky legal mysteries set in Hawaii. The advance I received was far greater than anything I’d hoped to get for a fourth Kevin Corvelli novel, and I was suddenly full of hope that my reinvention as an author of international action thrillers could be the catalyst for the writing career of which I’d always dreamed.

When the cover art for Good As Gone was first revealed to me, I was blown away. It looked as though it could serve as the one-sheet for a new blockbuster film starring Matt Damon or Daniel Craig. For the first time I could picture a novel with my name on the cover sitting in the bestseller racks in supermarkets and international airports. As much as I enjoyed writing the Kevin Corvelli books, I’d always known he’d never get me to where I wanted to be as a writer. Kevin Corvelli was cool and he was comfortable and his stories provided me the opportunity to show off my neurotic New York sense of humor. But he wasn’t the larger-than-life figure that could enthrall a wide audience and someday be portrayed by Ryan Reynolds on the big screen.

Simon Fisk, on the other hand, has that kind of potential. A former U.S. Marshal whose six-year-old daughter was abducted ten years earlier and never found, Simon Fisk is the type of haunted lone wolf who can leave behind a significant body count and still win the hearts and minds of readers. Of course, whether he (or I) will ever be even a moderate success remains to be seen. But ever since Publishers Weekly – who’d panned me mercilessly in the past – compared Simon Fisk to James Bond, I’ve at least felt as though I am in the game.

(Update: Since I wrote this article, which first appeared in Crimespree magazine this summer, I’ve been tapped to write the fourth book in Robert Ludlum’s Paul Janson series. I’ve recently begun work on Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Equation, which will be published by Grand Central in 2015. The second novel in my Simon Fisk series, titled Payoff, will be published by Minotaur Books on August 19, 2014.)   

About Douglas Corleone 

Douglas Corleone is the author of contemporary thrillers. His debut novel ONE MAN'S PARADISE, introducing hotshot defense attorney Kevin Corvelli, was a finalist for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best First Novel and winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award.

Douglas Corleone's first international thriller, titled GOOD AS GONE, featuring former U.S. Marshal Simon Fisk, was hailed by the Huffington Post as "a heart wrenching, adrenaline producing adventure that...leaves the reader gasping for breath at the end."

A former New York City criminal defense attorney, Douglas Corleone now resides in the Hawaiian Islands where he is at work on his next novel. 

Visit the author online at www.douglascorleone.com.

About Good As Gone

A heart-pounding tale of international intrigue about a man whose mission is to find a young girl who is as GOOD AS GONE…

 

The Secret to Revisions? It’s….

  By Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

You type THE END. You stand and applaud yourself. And you should! You’ve crafted the crucial first line, and the all-important end of page three, and the big hook at the end of chapter one. Your book is still compelling after twenty pages, the middle is not bad, and the ending is kickass.

Yay, you!

But you are not finished. Now comes the good part. The difficult part! But the good part. 

Revisions. 

The good news and the bad news: it takes longer, much longer than you might think, to make your book wonderful.

I love revisions. After those months of panic and agony as I try to unearth the plot from the recesses of my brain, it’s a joy to have that big manuscript, all those nice words, in front of me, ready for me to carve it into the book I really meant to write. 

Revisions. 

How do you go through the whole darn thing and make it better? (If you’re me, how do you wrangle 120,000 words into 95,000?)

I have kind of a system. Works for me. 

First, I put the book away for a week. (It should be two weeks, but who has two weeks?)

Then I start reading it—but here’s the key. I read it as if I didn’t write it. I do that by pretending I’m someone else. You know how when you hit “send” to deliver a manuscript to your editor or reader? And as soon as you do, you think—darn. I need to change this. That’s because in that moment, you are reading it through someone else’s eyes.

Try it. Okay? Poof. You’re someone else. A tough reader, a smart reader, one who is seeing this thing for the very first time. Look at it as fun. As a challenge. Your goal is to help this poor writer be fabulous. 

Ah HA. Now you’ll see the plot holes. The repetition. The stilted dialogue. The scenes (you have scenes, right?) without any action. The pages without conflict. The parts you skip.  The weak verbs. “Was.” “Just.” “Suddenly.” The excessive description. The characters with no motivation. The coincidences. The wordiness. The repetition. (Oh, I said that.)

Choose a character and follow that person through your story. Are the motivations clear and understandable? The behavior consistent? Their language unique and identifiable?

Find your default words: how often did you write ‘of course’? Or ‘really’? Or ‘very’? We all have our favorites. And they all have to go. In one manuscript, I discovered I used “flickered” 23 times. Flickered! And twisted about as many times.

(And I start too many sentences with “and.”)

Are there scenes where nothing happens? Make sure every scene advances the story. A good thriller is all about action, right? So no BOGSAT. (Bunch of guys, sitting around talking.)

Are there scenes without cinematic setting?  If your book were a movie, would it be interesting? How can you amp up the mind pictures to make your book as visual as possible?

Fun, huh? No, really, it is. You’re not finding mistakes or proof you’re a terrible writer. The opposite! Every time you discover an error or tighten a sentence or pick a stronger verb—you win. It’s a treasure hunt with you as the winner. 

And revisions are when the magic happens. You’ll see---wow, I have a theme! How did that happen? You’ll see clues you dropped—without even knowing it. You’ll see your clever parallel construction, and foreshadowing and character development and humor—stuff you didn’t even know you were writing.  You’ll see how your brain has created a bigger story than you realized—and it’ll be a joy. 

Jump into those revisions. There’s a surprise around every corner. And when you finally finally type “The End” for real—it will be the beginning of something wonderful.

BIO:
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affiliate. She’s won 30 EMMYs, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. A bestselling author of six mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: two Agathas, the  Anthony, Macavity, and most recently, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a "master at crafting suspenseful mysteries" and "a superb and gifted storyteller."Her newest thriller, THE WRONG GIRL, is a Boston Globe bestseller and was dubbed "Another winner" in a Booklist starred review. She’s on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. Visit her online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @hank_phillippi and Facebook/HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.

THE WRONG GIRL—Hank’s newest chilling and heart-wrenching novel of suspense—is a thrilling tale of dark secrets and frightening betrayal that strikes at the heart of every family. After her debut in THE OTHER WOMAN (nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Shamus, Daphne and Macavity; winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award), investigative reporter Jane Ryland now returns in THE WRONG GIRL--and this time she's on the trail of a frightening story that could rip families apart. Does a respected adoption agency have a frightening secret? Tipped off by a determined ex-colleague on a desperate quest to find her birth mother, Boston newspaper reporter Ryland begins to suspect that the agency is engaging in the ultimate betrayal--are they reuniting birth parents with the wrong children? 

For detective Jake Brogan and his partner, a young woman’s brutal murder seems a sadly predictable case of domestic violence, one that results in two toddlers being shuttled into the foster care system. Then Jake finds an empty cradle at the murder scene. Where is the baby who should have been sleeping there?

Jane and Jake are soon on a trail full of twists and turns that takes them deep into the heart of a foster care system in crisis and threatens to blow the lid off an adoption agency scandal. When the threatening phone calls start, Jane knows she is on the right track...but with both a killer at large and an infant missing, time is running out....

THE WRONG GIRL is a riveting novel of family connections—both known and unknown—vile greed, senseless murder, and the ultimate in deception. What if you didn’t know the truth about your own family?

(Watch for the new TRUTH BE TOLD in September 2014.)