What It's Like

by Chris F. Holm       

Every writer fantasizes about what their life will be like once they have a novel out. Lord knows this one did.

It's been two years since my first Collector novel, DEAD HARVEST, was released. Sixteen months since its follow-up, THE WRONG GOODBYE. The conclusion of the trilogy, THE BIG REAP, came out six months back. That means there’s enough time and words between me and HOLY CAPSLOCK I'M A REAL LIVE AUTHOR for the flush of pie-eyed romance to fade, and my life to settle into some kind of new normal.

So… what's it like?

Vast stretches of my life aren't all that different. I still have a day job. I still park the same car at the same house as I did before my books were published. Said house is messier than it used to be, because my writing output's increased considerably. Some of that was by necessity; I had a tight deadline for THE BIG REAP, and I was determined to deliver it on time. But mostly, I attribute the increased output (two finished novels in addition to the one I owed my publisher, and a handful of short stories) to the fact that I feel like I've been given my shot, and I'm determined not to waste it.

And then there are those short bursts of utter insanity that underscore just how much has changed. A conversation in a limo with a literary idol. Knocking back drinks with a table full of old friends you just met at a book con. Reading to a packed house. Reading to an empty room. Signing books, which at first feels completely weird and wrong and oh by the way there are no do-overs if you screw up the inscription. Getting your first bad review, and feeling like someone ripped your heart out of your chest. Getting a fantastic one, and fixating on the one thing they didn’t love. Freaking out a fan by tweeting at them. Realizing that writer whose books you hate is the nicest person on the planet. Realizing that writer whose books you love is kind of a jackass. Realizing people feel the same in both directions about you.

The highs are beyond anything I dared hope for. And the lows, I quickly realized, are the sorts of lows all authors feel. Sure they suck – but they mean you’re in the game.

It's a hoary old saw that college is the best time of your life, but there's a kernel of truth in that statement. Thing is, it's only half-right at best. For many, college is the wildest, most challenging time of their lives, before settling into the long, hard slog of adulthood. It's the best and worst life has to offer all rolled into one deliciously melodramatic package.

That's what it’s like to have your books out in the world. Thrilling. Gut-wrenching. Wonderful. Horrible.

But damn, if it ain't living.

THE BIG REAP (Angry Robot Books, July 2013): Sam Thornton collects souls. The souls of the damned, to be precise. Condemned to an eternity of servitude to hell thanks to a devil's bargain he made to save his dying wife, his gig as a Collector is part penance, part punishment, and all suck. But just because he's a capital-letters Bad Guy doesn't mean he's a bad guy… or does it? In the past, Sam’s moral compass has always steered him true. But when he’s tasked with dispatching the mythical Brethren – a group of former Collectors who've cast off their ties to hell – is he still working on the side of right?

Chris F. Holm wrote his first story at the age of six. It got him sent to the principal's office. Since then, his work has fared better, appearing in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. He's been longlisted for a Stoker Award and nominated for an Anthony, a Derringer, a Silver Falchion, and a pair of Spinetinglers (one of which he won.) His Collector novels recast the battle between heaven and hell as old-fashioned crime pulp. Visit him on the web at www.chrisfholm.com, or follow @chrisfholm on Twitter.

Liberty on Beale Street

by Jude Hardin

Someone once asked me where I get my ideas. It’s a common question, and one with as many answers as there are authors, I suppose. For me, story ideas often come from real-life experiences. Not to say that my work is autobiographical. Not at all. But every snowball at the top of every hill needs that first push to get it going. That’s what I’m talking about. A catalyst.

I joined the Navy in 1985. After boot camp, I was sent to Memphis, Tennessee for some initial training in my chosen field of avionics. They kept me busy for the first few weeks, but eventually I earned a Saturday and Sunday free from duty. In the Army they call it a weekend pass. In the Navy they call it Liberty. It’s what you live for.

On our very first day away from the base, my friend Jeff and I decided to check out some of the drinking establishments on Beale Street. We chose a place that wasn’t too crowded, grabbed a stool at the bar and ordered some drinks. Rum and Coke for him, Miller Lite longneck for me. We hadn’t earned our “civvies chit” yet, so we were in our dress whites. Just a couple of sailors out having a good time.

We sat there and chatted for a while, drinking our drinks and munching on pretzels and generally enjoying an afternoon free from responsibility.

Then it happened.

A man sat on the barstool next to mine. Jeff was on my left, and this guy was on my right. He was short and skinny, and he needed a shave. Tattered jeans, dirty jacket, greasy black hair.

He put his hand on my leg, and at the same time leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“You’re pretty,” he said.

“You need to move along,” I said.

But he didn’t. He didn’t move along. Instead, he slid his hand down to my inner thigh. Furious at the nerve of this creep, I grabbed my beer bottle, broke it across the bar, and jammed it into his face.

The man screamed. Bright red blood gushed from the hole where his cheek used to be. He stood and staggered back and pulled a .22 caliber revolver out of his pocket.

Fortunately, two guys grabbed him from behind before he could get a round off. They threw him down and pinned him to the floor. I guess they held him there until the police came, but I didn’t stick around to find out. Jeff and I hurried out to the street, walked a few blocks and then took a bus back to the base.

Just a couple of sailors out having a good time.
Is that the end of the story?

No. It’s only the beginning.

Is that what really happened?

No. But someday I might decide to use that day on Beale Street as the initial spark for a new thriller.

Get the idea?


New from Jude Hardin: iSEAL
A civilian contractor for the Department of Defense has created an implantable brain-computer interface that will make the fiercest warriors on the planet exponentially smarter, faster, and deadlier. Codename: iSEAL. After years of painstaking research, the device is finally ready for human trials. Desperate to be reinstated as a Special Forces candidate, Nathan Brennan reluctantly volunteers for the study. Four weeks as a lab rat and his military career will be back on course. Unfortunately, by the end of day one, he finds himself on the run from the police, the CIA, and a mysterious criminal mastermind named Oberwand. With no memory of his past, and with little hope for a meaningful future, Brennan must utilize every weapon in his binary arsenal just to stay alive.

Jude Hardin publishes thrillers in several different subgenres. He graduated from the University of Louisville in 1983 with an English degree, and currently lives and works in northeast Florida. When he’s not pounding away at the computer keyboard, Jude can be found pounding away on his drums, playing tennis, reading, or wandering the streets of Bakersfield wearing wraparound shades and a red bandana. You can learn more about Jude and his books at http://judehardinbooks.com/

Six Ways to Write Through Self-Doubt

by Erin Healy

At some point in the course of writing each of my novels, I’m overcome with certainty that my story is coming undone (or, if I’m just beginning, might never get off the ground). The pages of my manuscript take on the look of confetti that a light sneeze could obliterate. A simple thought paralyzes my creativity and confidence: You are not up to this task.

There was a time when I expected this anxiety to fade. Experience would lead to confidence. I don’t know why I thought this. I’ve been a published author for five years and a career editor for more than twenty, and the talented novelists I know routinely experience self-doubt, whether they’ve written one book or fifty. In fact, I’m wary of the work of writers who claim never to question their abilities.

Here are some of the ways we veterans outlast our inner critic:

Show up each day. Engage your novel in whatever condition it’s in. Worst-case scenario: your story is coming undone and you are not up to the task. Moaning this mantra from under a quilt can’t change the state of things. The only way to hold a work-in-progress together, discover real solutions, determine the actual value of the story, and improve your abilities is to keep doing the work. Showing up is the one self-disciplined action that solves most story problems.

Do what feeds your creativity. I like to walk, watch movies, and revisit books on storytelling technique and principle (such as Story, by Robert McKee). Reread your favorite novel, the one you wish you’d written. Hike a mountain, clean your house, visit the art museum with your best friend. Do whatever it is that gets you in the mood to show up. (Otherwise, you’re procrastinating.)

Get input from a trusted adviser who can talk you out of your dark hole of doubt and/or brainstorm solutions with you. With any luck that will be your editor, or a writer with more experience than you. You might only need an objective, qualified reader (not your mom) to tell you that the story is in fact quite good! Beware too much advice from too many sources, which can confuse rather than inspire.

Be actively patient in seeking a solution. Hold your story loosely so that it can become a surprising beauty. Generate new material but don’t throw anything away. Try new techniques. Hit your daily word-count goal with stream-of-consciousness dialog between you and a character about the problem you face. Write back story that probably won’t appear in the novel but might reveal what you need to know about your characters’ journeys. I often get unstuck by revisiting or extending my research. Write unplanned scenes that deviate from your outline. Or try writing an outline of the parts you haven’t imagined yet.

Treat your story kindly, like the parent of an adorable awkward adolescent, a fragile creature. Love its potential. Forgive its shortcomings.

Maintain your momentum. Thriller writers are genre writers, and part of what’s required to be a successful (i.e., money-making) genre author is the ability to accumulate a body of work in a concentrated amount of time. (A friend of mine has recently gone underground with a contract to produce serialized novels at the rate of 200,000 words in four months.) Inertia is a genre writer’s enemy. If you don’t have the luxury of a publisher willing to print on your schedule, you’ll probably have to accept that not all the novels you write will be equally excellent or inspired, no matter how hard you strive to best yourself each time. As with any discipline, the level of maturity you can attain in your craft and genre is directly related to the amount of practice you put into it. Each time your self-doubt rears its head, you’ll be better equipped to hold it in its proper place.

Erin Healy is an independent book editor and novelist who lives with her family in Colorado. Her new supernatural-suspense novel, Stranger Things, is the tale of a group of strangers working to bring down a sex trafficking ring in California. 

True Confession: My Rookie Year as an Author

by Norb Vonnegut

Congratulations, debut authors.

This is a story I tell book clubs. I wished I had told it during my Debut Breakfast, which is why I’m writing it for The Thrill Begins. Every word is true. And if you’ll pardon me for the unsolicited advice, I encourage you to have some fun when you’re presenting to our fellow authors this July.

In 2009 I was living the dream. I had left the relative obscurity of my career as a financial adviser and was writing full time. That September I traveled to Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane to promote the Australian edition of Top Producer. It was there—at the Brisbane Writers Festival—I began to understand the meaning of primetime.

Or not.

First a little background: Wall Street runs from publicity. If you make the news, there’s usually a pink slip in your future. I had no experience with the media or ginning up publicity. I was ill prepared for life as a “book slut,” which is the expression my wife uses when I ask people to like Norb Vonnegut Books, my page on Facebook.

But Brisbane. Lovely Brisbane. What a place. What a ride.

During my first week as a published author, I signed books until my hand went numb. I joined several panels of celebrated authors, taught a “master class” on writing, and was quoted in leading Australian newspapers. After three or four radio interviews and at least one television appearance, I began operating under the delusion that I had become an overnight celebrity.

Yeah, an overnight celebrity.

Near the end of my stay in Brisbane, I woke up at 1 AM one morning—both literally and figuratively. My publicist had scheduled an interview with Buddy Cianci (RI talk-show host and former Mayor of Providence) at 2 AM Brisbane time, which was noon on the east coast of the United States.

I set my alarm for 1 AM because, after ten days of big parties and late nights, I knew I’d be a wreck. It’d take me an hour to pull myself together. And this interview was important, my first with an American radio station. 

         Sure enough, I woke up groggy. Bed head. Sleep creases. I pulled on a pair of old shorts but stayed with the flannel pajama tops that have been part of my wardrobe since last century. Not a pretty sight.

It was balmy outside. I tried to wake up by replying to e-mails. I really didn’t care how I looked—the ratty old shirt, the hair on walkabout, the bags under my eyes. I assumed nobody was outside at that hour.

Wrong. 

I sat on the bench in front of my hotel, slowly gaining consciousness before my phone call to the station. That’s when a woman and two guys approached me from the distance. They were returning from a big night out, Aussie style.

She pointed at me.

Not now, I thought. My bed head. My nasty PJs.

The trio drew closer, and the woman pointed again.

She wants to talk. She wants my autograph, I thought. Not the way I look.

“Look,” she said. “He’s homeless.”

I glanced back over my shoulder and, finding no one behind me, realized the woman was talking about me.

She persisted, shredding my ego, tearing out my heart. “Do you think he needs money?”

I felt helpless, trapped—like a deer in the headlights. My hands rose involuntarily, up, up, up. I didn’t know what to say.

You have me all wrong.

And the woman sighed, a note of relief in her voice. “It’s okay. He has a BlackBerry.”

Oh well. So much for celebrity.

The truth is, I loved being an author then. And I’m still living the dream today. Janet Maslin of the New York Times described The Trust, The Gods of Greenwich, and Top Producer as “glittery thrillers about fiscal malfeasance.” End Game is the working title for my fourth novel. It’s about a cold art heist that heats up after thirty years.

There’s nothing I like more than stories from the road. You’ve heard one of my mine. What’s the best, craziest, weirdest, most shocking thing that’s happened to you during your first year as a published author?

Come on, out with it 


The NYT describes Norb Vonnegut’s novels (The Trust, The Gods of Greenwich, Top Producer) as “money porn” and “a red-hot franchise.” When he’s not working on End Game—a forgotten art heist heats up after thirty years—he’s writing about wealth management for the WSJ. 
Published in nine languages, Norb is a trustee at the American Foundation for the Blind. LIKE Norb Vonnegut Books on Facebook for more.

January Debut Releases

It's a new year, time for new goals and celebrations for goals achieved. It's also the first Thursday in January, which means debut releases. 

Please take a look and let’s celebrate their success!

Elizabeth Heiter - Hunted (Mira) January 1, 2014

www.elizabethheiter.com 

Terror stalks a small Virginia town…

FBI rising star, criminal profiler Evelyn Baine, knows how to think like a serial killer. But she’s never chased anyone like the Bakersville Burier, who hunts young women and displays them, half-buried, deep in the woods. As the body count climbs, Evelyn’s relentless pursuit of the killer puts her career – and her life – at risk. And the evil lurking in the Burier’s mind may be more than even she can unravel.

Terror is closer than she thinks…

The Bakersville Burier knows he’s got an FBI profiler on his trail. He knows who she is and where to find her. And he’s biding his time, because he’s planned a special punishment for Evelyn. She may have tracked other killers, but he vows to make this her last chase. This time it’s her turn to be hunted!

New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan says, "HUNTED is a terrific, gripping, page-turning debut by a talented new voice in suspense. A great read. "

IS YOUR LAWN YELLING AT YOU? AND OTHER HORRORS OF WRITING YOUR FIRST NOVEL by Stephen K. Ryan

The first question I get from folks who have read my book, those who liked it of course, is: “Loved your book - when are you going to write your next one?” I would smile nicely then offer up a full plate of polite baloney, because the first thing that goes through my mind is my wife and the thought of her dashing off to Wal-Mart’s gun department. I have given serious thought of opening my next book with the line: “Honey, great news- I have my next book in mind; I start tonight”. This would be followed by two quick blasts from a hand gun. The lap top gets it first, then the clueless dope gets it between the eyes. The second thing that goes through my mind, oddly enough, is my lawn. For some reason it was my lawn -sullen, demanding, and often run amuck – that reminded me, more than anything else, how much time I spent writing my first book. But I loved every minute of it.

The honest reason why I have not started “my next book” is I have been incredibly busy marketing my debut novel. Personally, for me, I found myself feeling a bit pretentious starting another project until I felt my first book had achieved some measure of success. So I have been totally motivated to promote my book – not to get rich – we all know that reality – but to prove, to myself, in the cold, brutally honest world of the market place, that I belong - that “yes, damn it – I am a writer”. Not until then would I start a new book. My publisher has been delightful to work with but they are not part of the big five so promotional efforts are limited and so unless you are Bill O’Reilly, book promotion is tough, time consuming work. Reaching and motivating people who can bring attention to your book takes a lot of effort but it must be done or your book will not get read – period.

What has worked for me so far. I am fairly certain I am not breaking new ground with my helpful tips, but here goes.

1. My book is a religious thriller with a twist. The Catholic Church, in my book, is not the dark sinister anti-Christ that we often read about but rather the hero is a priest. He is a “miracle detective” – a decent guy. Because of this I have had some luck with Catholic / faith based media. This niche has real upside.
   
   
2. My novel, in part, takes place in my home town of Alexandria, Va. My local paper is doing an article about my book. This is book marketing 101 – everybody knows this. The important point is that it takes a lot of time and persistent to make it happen. I called my local paper for the first time in July of 2013 and it was not until this December that I sat down with a reporter.
   
   
3. One of the main characters in my book is an avid sailor. There are boating scenes that take place on the Chesapeake Bay. In my real life I spend a lot of time on boats as well. This led to an article about me and my book in a popular sailing magazine.
   
   
4. To be successful, unfortunately, your book has to be successful. This advice came to me from a top Washington, D.C. literary agent. We are friends, we play tennis together. He told me “make your book really successful, Steve, and we can help you with your next book – keep pulling on the oars.”

The old line “write what you know” can be useful in book marketing as well. My recommendation for a new novelist is to reach out to groups that have some connection to the subject matter of your book. Be creative and be a grinder.

About The Madonna Files

On the quiet campus of M.I.T., a math professor is asked by the Vatican to determine the probability that six children are telling the truth. The children, from a small town in Bosnia, a town filled with sacred drama, say they see the Virgin Mary. The children claim the Virgin Mary has given them ten secrets that include apocalyptic warnings for the entire world.   On the other side of the world, as a Russian Freighter with a mysterious cargo vanishes off the coast of Iran, a letter goes missing from the Pope's apartment.. A priest - a Vatican "Miracle Detective" - is asked to find the missing letter, and as the miracle detective closes in on the secret letter, world events begin to hurdle out of control.

Stephen Ryan's explosive debut novel challenges the prevailing orthodoxies of American history and Christianity, and reveals the dynamic presence of the Virgin Mary throughout the ages. With unexpected turns and a full dose of scholarly intrigue along the way, The Madonna Files is a contemporary religious thriller that explores the hidden secrets of the Virgin Mary.

About Stephen Ryan

Stephen K. Ryan is publisher of Mystic Post .com and manager of  Castine Investment Management, a wealth advisory firm. Stephen's writings about mystics, mysteries and miracles of the Catholic Church  have been internationally recognized.
Stephen is married to Tania and lives in Alexandria, Va.  Tania and Stephen  have two children - Andrew and Meredith.   When he is not banging away on his computer, he can often be found somewhere on an ocean racing sailboats.

Connecting With an Audience

We’ve all been there. You’ve moved past the drafting stages, exhaustively worked over the prose like a duct-taped punching bag, and the writing is finally good. That’s when you share a scene from your book where a character is hacked in half by an ax and, after an awkward silence, your trusted reader hands it back to you, a little pale, and says something like, “It’s well-written, but not the kind of thing I like reading.” Or maybe it’s a different passage in the book, a passage you fell in love with, where your hero finally realizes romance and your reader says, “It was good, but I like the action scenes more. This is just a thought, but…when he says I love you, maybe have him holding an ax?”

Anyone familiar with even the basics of publishing knows that identifying a readership is hugely important. Agents and publishers want to know who you write like. Amazon pairs and suggests your work in accordance to reader preferences. Having a defined genre helps to identity the best reviewers for your work and find which writers you should bug for blurbs.

This was a problem for me. Even though I’m a fan and student of thrillers, I wasn’t sure where I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead fit best.

Despite its grim title, my debut thriller isn’t noir enough to be noir. It has some funny moments but isn’t a comedy, and deals with parenting but isn’t domestic. If there’s a category for a book where a man seeks revenge, hires assassins but the plan goes wrong and ends up placing himself and everyone he loves in danger, and he also has a pet rabbit, well, that’s where my book fits.

Of course I knew, as my publisher gently reminded me when my book was first accepted for publication, I’d need readers. So I decided to write a prequel for I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead – about a depressed hit man who factors in to the novel – called When the Deep Purple Falls and distribute it serially. I placed the prequel on sites like JukePop, WattPad and Tuesday Serial and, happily, people liked it. I had interest, and that was as much as I could realistically hope for. And a lot of those readers ended up reading and liking my debut. It’s become the scraggly but stubborn beginning of an audience.

Only a few lucky writers have a vast and dedicated audience – outside of their friends and family – after one book. But that is what we all want, and getting it extends beyond marketing, and beyond people buying enough books to keep you in business, or reading your genre because they know what they’re going to get. At its best, there’s love in the reader-writer contract, in the way the audience you’ve searched for feels like they found you. And it echoes that moment in your writing, when the story you’re telling surprises you, and you suddenly realize you’re working with magic. The book is good, the story is fun, you smile as you type; later, they smile as they read. It’s an odd connection, separated by time, unproven by anything physical. Readers feel it with writers; writers first felt it as readers. We’ve all been there. We want to be taken back.

About E. A. Aymar

E.A. Aymar studied creative writing and earned a Masters degree in Literature. He was born in Panama and has lived throughout the United States and Europe. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers and SinC, and he and his wife live with a relatively benign animal menagerie outside of Washington, D.C. 

For more information about E.A. Aymar, and to watch the animated trailer forI'll Sleep When You're Dead, visit www.eaymar.com/novel.

About I'll Sleep When You're Dead

Tom Starks has spent the three years since his wife’s murder struggling to single-handedly raise their daughter, Julie, while haunted by memories of his dead spouse. When he learns that the man accused of her murder, Chris Taylor, has been released from prison, Tom hires a pair of hit men to get his revenge. But when the hit men botch the assassination, Tom is inadvertently pulled into their violent world.

And now those hit men are after him and his daughter.

To Promote or Not To Promote...Is That Even a Question?

The question I get asked most often by emerging writers is whether it's really necessary to...X.

"X" can be any number of things. Tweet. Blog. Appear at bookstores. Maintain a website. Have a GoodReads or Facebook or Shelfari presence, and what is this Pinterest thing anyway?

Because we writers are stumbling around in search of an answer to this question: How do we become successful authors? And this one: How do we reach readers?

As the great William Goldman says, "Nobody knows."

But I don't think this wisdom means that we should just throw up our hands. And while there's not exactly a roadmap for figuring out what you should do once you've reached that land called Publication, I have accumulated a few thoughts during the long road to my own. Getting a book written well enough to be published is one of the harder things any of us will accomplish in our lives. But then what?

First I need to back up and tell you a little about myself. It took me three agents, eight novels, fifteen almost-offers, and eleven years on submission before I sold my debut novel. This finally happened through a confluence of events that still feels mystical to me. And the dream of being a published author was such a long, long, long time in coming that, once it happened, I did the only logical thing.

I hired an independent publicity firm, rented out our house, withdrew the kids from school, and asked my husband if he would accompany me on a book tour that would cover 44 states and 40,000 miles. Not exactly in that order, but you get the point. The whole family's life would be subsumed by this dream, at least for the next seven months.

Since my book came out, we have visited over 200 bookstores, as well as libraries, book clubs and almost every place where people come together over books. I've been the inaugural author at a brand new mystery bookstore in Madison, WI and the newbie who drew the smallest audience at a bookstore that holds near-daily events. I stood up in Oxford, MS with a rockabilly band behind me and spoke for precisely fourteen minutes--we were being recorded live--to a house crowd of three hundred. I've done Sit & Sign's where only one person showed up, but that one person drove three hours to see me, and thus will always have a place in the Annals of my Becoming an Author, not to mention in my heart. And there have been events that hit almost every point between these extremes.

So, is this the point of my blog post? Is there a roadmap after all, a literal one that shows our route, or a message: change your whole life in service of The Book?

I'm hoping that writers will take something else from this description of what I've done. That it's not necessary to do any one thing as an author. Neither Tweet nor Tour.

Instead, figure out ways you will find joy in your book being out there, and in your great love of books in general. Things that will help you celebrate this shining accomplishment while connecting with those who want to share it.

To my mind, it doesn't matter what you do, it just matters that in today's increasingly crowded content space, you find something that allows your own voice to stand out.

Say you're an introvert and the idea of meeting crowds of people face-to-face sounds as draining as a bathtub. Online social media might be a great outlet for you. Or perhaps you have an author platform, such as being a doctor who writes medical thrillers, or a biotech expert who wrote a book about GMOs. Maybe you can find a listserv or organization that will appreciate hearing your wisdom. One good thing about having 1.4 million blogs out there is that one of them is sure to be interested in your topic. There are more reviewers today than back when a daily paper landed on the curb at every house in the United States. The net gives like-minded readers and writers ways to find each other virtually and face-to-face. There are more riches than we can ever spend, but that also means that there is more than enough to go around. It's just a matter of finding it.

Some will find Twitter the perfect medium for self-expression while for others the idea of boiling something meaningful down to 140 characters will be anathema. Some will love blogging, others will start a charitable cause connected to their book. Some might come give workshops at great writers' organizations, such as the one that's featuring this post.

Some might even take to the road for seven months.

And when you do--whatever you do--please come find me. I'll be one of the connections that you make.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer whose debut novel, Cover of Snow, was released by Ballantine in January 2013, and whose follow-up, Ruin Falls, will appear in April 2014. After making her home on the road for seven months, she has come to settle in upstate New York. For now. 

Debut Days

Generally we reserve the first Thursday to celebrate that month's Debut Authors' book releases. Sometimes, people join ITW post-release, so they miss the excitement of seeing their book featured on the blog. When we have an opportunity to do a "catch up" posting for these authors, we jump on the possibility.

Please join us in celebrating (again!) the release of our Debut Authors' initial novel.

Maegan Beaumont – Carved in Darkness (Midnight Ink) May 8, 2013

www.maeganbeaumont.com

Fifteen years ago, a psychotic killer abducted seventeen-year-old Melissa Walker. For 83 days she was raped, tortured, and then left for dead in a deserted churchyard . . . but she was still alive.

Melissa begins a new life as homicide inspector Sabrina Vaughn. With a new face and a new name, it’s her job to hunt down murderers—a job she does very well.

But when Michael O’Shea, a childhood acquaintance with a suspicious past, suddenly finds her, he brings to life the nightmare Sabrina has long since buried.

Believing his sister was recently murdered by the same monster who attacked Sabrina, Michael is dead set on getting his revenge—using Sabrina as bait.

S.L. Menear – Deadstick Dawn (Suspense Publishing) August 6, 2013

www.slmenear.com

The Belfast Agreement is about to be shattered by Operation Blue Blood. One young American stands in the way, airline pilot Samantha Starr. She is catapulted into a deadly chess match with police, assassins, and British Special Forces, all who want her dead. The fate of nine noble bloodlines depends on Samantha and a boy whose hero is a wizard. Stranded in Scotland where she is accused of kidnapping and murder, where can she run? When a US Navy fighter pilot and a SEAL join the hunt and every choice can get her killed and start a bloody war in Northern Ireland, on whom should she rely? The line between trust and betrayal is razor sharp, and it is cut at Deadstick Dawn.

S. B. Redstone – A Sinister Obsession (Black Opal Books) August 27, 2013
http://sbredstoneauthor.com

A psychopathic killer on a quest leaves behind a string of brutal murders, and to find the Who, the police must first discover the Why...

Detective Aubrey McKenzie has been assigned to investigate the murders. A lovely, fabulously wealthy, dark-haired Scot, whose iron will was forged in the inferno of human tragedy, Aubrey is stymied by the lack of solid clues. Now she must rely on her paranormal ability to apprehend the killer—an ability that has been invaluable in her police work but has made a disaster of her social life. Fate teams Aubrey with Detective Joshua Diamond, a handsome, talented, and compassionate man who is more than happy eating a greasy bacon-cheeseburger and wearing clothes that should have been thrown out with the trash. In a race against time, Aubrey and Joshua must overcome their vast differences—and their attraction for each other—and discover the identity of this elusive killer, and the quest this fiend is on, before more lives are destroyed.

Orest Stelmach – The Boy From Reactor 4 (Thomas & Mercer) March 9, 2013 www.oreststelmach.com

Nadia’s memories of her father are not happy ones. An angry, secretive man, he died when she was thirteen, leaving his past shrouded in mystery. When a stranger claims to have known her father during his early years in Eastern Europe, she agrees to meet—only to watch the man shot dead on a city sidewalk. With his last breath, he whispers a cryptic clue, one that will propel Nadia on a high-stakes treasure hunt from New York to her ancestral homeland of Ukraine. There she meets an unlikely ally: Adam, a teenage hockey prodigy who honed his skills on the abandoned cooling ponds of Chernobyl. Physically and emotionally scarred by radiation syndrome, Adam possesses a secret that could change the world—if she can keep him alive long enough to do it. A twisting tale of greed, secrets, and lies, The Boy from Reactor 4  will keep readers guessing until the final heart-stopping page.

GIVING THANKS FOR MICHAEL PALMER

We lost a member of our ITW family on October 30 when medical thriller writer and human being extraordinaire Dr. Michael Palmer passed away. On this day of Thanksgiving, the staff of "The Thrill Begins" wants to express our gratitude for this amazing man and our appreciation of you, our readers, by sharing Michael’s wisdom and his encouragement to be fearless. 

We’re honored that Daniel Palmer, Michael's son and author of STOLEN, introduces not only his father's words, but the man behind those words. 

                                                             Wishing you all a HappyThanksgiving!

                                                                   The Staff of “The Thrill Begins” 

My father, Michael Palmer, derived endless pleasure from helping and mentoring new writers. When he was getting started in the business, many well-established writers gave him a blurb for his first novel, THE SISTERHOOD. He vowed never to refuse a blurb request from any up-and-coming author, and as a result, he often had little time to read books of his own choosing. During the days and weeks following his death, I received numerous emails and letters from fellow writers he had mentored who commended my father’s generous spirit. Each noted how my dad took a special interest in their work. How was it possible one man could give so freely of his time without diluting the results? He was constructive without being critical. He was patient because that was his nature. As busy as he was, my dad took the time to listen and help. He was truly a giving person, and for this so many others were thankful. Dad’s first passion (outside of his family) was medicine. And if anything, my father was a true healer. He could mend an arm with the same deft skill he could tackle a clunky piece of prose. I hope you’ll take the guiding principles about writing my father outlined in this previously published piece to heart. But also you should know that his outlook on life came down to four even more important guiding principles.  1) You can only do what you can do. 2) Live one day at a time. 3) Never go around comparing your insides to everyone else’s outsides. 4) Being a good person supersedes everything else. 

By Michael Palmer

BE FEARLESS

Before I get started, let me explain the way I write when I am communicating with friends...

It’s like this—thoughts with no particular syntax or attention to punctuation...lots of ellipses...One of the reasons for doing this is that I can only type with 2 fingers...think of it—19 books with all the rewrites…20 if you count the one that has never been published in English (6 foreign translations, though) and all of it done with these two fingers...my first 2 books were done on a manual Olivetti, the third on an electric smith corona, and the next two on a Kay-Pro, the 30 pound “portable” 9” green screen so-called writer’s computer…After that it’s been Mac all the way…I go for easy… 

No wonder I needed to have a carpal tunnel release 2 years ago…great operation, by the way, for anyone who needs it…write me for the name of my doc at MGH… 

There is more than laziness to my blogging this way…this is how I write when I’m figuring things out or am trying to break my way out of creator’s block…writing is easy—making up what to write, not so easy…so I call it creator’s block, and writing like this is the way I handle it. 

So, here are some rambling thoughts for you as they pop into my head—thoughts accumulated over 34 years (I first tried my hand at this in November, 1978 and sold my first book as an 80-page outline in 1980 for what was at the time, the largest advance ever paid to a fiction writer who had never published a book -- $250,000… amazing) …for some of my writing story, check out the bio on www.michaelpalmerbooks.com) … 

My two guiding principles in this business are never to forget that (1) THIS IS HARD and (2) BE FEARLESS… 

It is so hard that I can never believe how many authors actually finish books—good or stinky, published or not…I don’t think I ever would have tried if I didn’t have a nice fall-back job behind me—namely: physician…talk about a safety net…my two biggest assets are my always wild imagination, and my discipline…

Wanna know if you have the discipline it takes to write a novel?—take organic chemistry…as for the second guiding principal, that’s what it’s all about—you (me) must get rid of the fear of sounding stupid and also of being rejected…write first, worry later…

And be careful about reading your stuff over when you are tired…not much of anything reads un-stupid when you’re exhausted…of course, we’re all always exhausted, so the state is relative…any questions, read your stuff out loud (I do that all the time, and when I’ve finished a book, I actually pay my son Daniel (a terrific writer, now finishing his 4th thriller, and doing well with STOLEN, his third) to read it out loud with me… 

I write almost every chance I get…usually I write six days a week with a goal of like three to five pages a day…

HOWEVER, perhaps the third guiding principle is never to be too hard on myself…if I do two hours and only one page and can’t do any more for whatever reason, then I walk away…

But remember what I wrote about discipline…discipline is doing it when you don’t want to…you must know yourself to know when it’s time to stop…I used to be driven to do another hour in organic by seeing other pre-meds sitting there in the library with their noses in that humongous to me…I just now put on some music for a while…anything to make it easier…I love the 150 or so tunes on my iTunes and know them so well, they are like white noise most of the time…at the moment it’s Richard Cory by S&G…what a great song…

Brings up my 4th guiding principle…never if you can help it, I mean NEVER go around comparing your insides (or writing) to other people’s outsides…it takes practice and reminders, but it will make a hell of a difference in your writing and your life…need reinforcement about this, get Richard Cory from the sounds of silence album and put it on your iTunes…

Everyone wants to be an overnight wonder in this business…I never even thought about that and damn if I didn’t luck out with The Sisterhood…but life and the book business was different then…it was more personal and less crowded, it moved slower and there were amazingly talented and imaginative people in the publishing world whose job it was to make me a success…there are still such people, but the industry can’t pay enough to keep them…

Now I watch what son Daniel is going through and I ache for him…he’s good—really good, actually…but there are just so many people writing, and so many publishers throwing books up against the wall searching for the next girl with the dragon tattoo, and then deserting the author when the book doesn’t immediately make it…computer-generated sales figures are the enemy in that regard…

There are e-books flooding the market, and amazon, and nook, and blogs and conferences and speaking opportunities from organizations looking for “free” entertainment and program fillers…you can’t imagine how many ARCs I get every month searching for blurbs…believe it or not, Daniel’s older brother Matthew just got a great 6-figure, 2-book deal from Putnam…he’s got a great “fall-back” job as I did…so I don’t ache for what he’s in for as much as I do for the full-time writers who have no other source of income… 

That brings me to the last thought I want to blog about here…publicity and marketing…new writers often ask me: okay, my book is coming out next march, now what can I do to get people to read it?? …they never like my answer, which is that the most effective thing they can do is to write another book…

It wasn’t like that in the old days…I was on good morning America and today and Larry King (several times) and many other shows…I had reviews in tons of newspapers (some of those papers still exist and some of those actually still review books—but a continuously shrinking number) …I did dozens and dozens of my favorite media—talk radio, and dozens of shows like good morning Cleveland and good morning Pittsburgh, many of which if not most have gone the way of the dodo bird…

So what’s left? …here’s sort of an amalgam of what I’ve learned from my experience and Daniel’s and others and what I will be passing on to Matthew (who is too busy working for the state department to go out and hock his book anyway) …

First of all, get a web site and keep it up…get lots of business cards made that are eye-catching and list your site (www.VISTAprint.com)…..give one to whoever will take it…make it informative and imaginative…people love the writers’ tips on my web site, even though I don’t have time to update them…TV and radio appearances probably help…TV lots…newspaper ads—who knows? …no one really seems to know about ads, even big ones like the full pagers I have had in the NY Times…

Social media may actually help, but only if you really work at it…contests, frequent postings, Facebook ads to increase numbers on your “fan page” …what about hiring a pro?? I REALLY DON’T KNOW…

I would go social media pro rather than media unless you have a real hook that would appeal to TV or Glenn Beck or someone…Daniel does social media himself, but he spends time on it, and of course when you’re doing anything that isn’t writing, you’re not writing…make that guiding principal #6 or whatever number I’m on… 

Speaking of which, even though this is fun and relaxing and easy for me, as well as being gratifying because I love to help new writers, while I’m doing it, I’m not working on my new book, RESISTANT … so… 

POLITICAL SUICIDE:

Dr. Lou Welcome, from Palmer's bestselling Oath of Office, is back. A desperate phone call embroils Lou in scandal and murder involving Dr. Gary McHugh, known around the Capital as the “society doc.” Lou has been supervising McHugh, formerly a black-out drinker, through his work with the Physician Wellness Office.  McHugh has been very cavalier about his recovery, barely attending AA and refusing a sponsor. But Lou sees progress, and the two men are becoming friends. Now, McHugh has been found unconscious in his wrecked car after visiting a patient of his, the powerful Congressman Elias Colston, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Soon after McHugh awakens in the hospital ER, Colston's wife returns home to find her husband shot dead in their garage. She then admits to the police that she had just broken off a long-standing affair with McHugh. Something about McHugh's story has Lou believing he is telling the truth, that the Congressman was dead when he arrived and before he blacked out. Lou agrees to look into matters, but when he encounters motive, method and opportunity he is hard pressed to believe in his friend—that is until a deadly high-level conspiracy begins to unravel, and Lou acquires information that makes him the next target.

BIO:  Michael Palmer was the author of nineteen novels of medical suspense, all international bestsellers, and an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society Physical Health Services, devoted to helping physicians sidelined by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, and chemical dependency. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. His twentieth novel, Resistant, will be released in May, 2014. You may read more about Michael at www.michaelpalmerbooks.com.