THE LURE OF HELL

I finished my HARD CASE sequel last night. THE LURE OF HELL came in at close to 98,000 words. Today, I of course start the editing process. Editing reminds each of us storytellers marketing our word plots, how important loving what we write, and the characters we create, really is. I can only imagine what it would be like if I hated everything needing to be honed into a saleable product, or if the story bored me to tears, or the characters didn’t strike an emotional connection with me. THE LURE OF HELL is experimental in a number of ways. I ended up enjoying the experience of writing in first person point of view for John Harding, Book One, HARD CASE. In Book Two, I’m introducing two new cold blooded killers to John Harding’s Oakland crew, Clint Dostiene and Lynn Montoya. The fact no publisher or agent would touch HARD CASE, and I did send it out nearly seventy times on the query trail, enhances the fact it is selling very well on the indie market. No publisher or agent would ever touch THE LURE OF HELL either. I don’t head hop in THE LURE OF HELL, but I use more than one POV – a mortal sin in the writing world. I have a day job. Even at my newly advanced age of 63, I can still crank out the repair jobs, so I can have fun writing as I commit publishing mortal sins.  :)

The second observation I realized over the weekend that should have hit me a while ago is what a distinctly visual society we’ve become. This may be old news to my writing friends, but it’s something that didn’t strike me until my books began selling. People can go to the movies, sucking up the ‘Die Hard’ franchise, Avatar, Avengers, The Expendables, The Transformers, etc. without any questioning of believability. They suspend reality like a worn out Kleenex. When they read a fiction novel, however, they suddenly go nuts if the author creates a larger than life character or plot. It’s like, ‘hey, you can’t do that’. Well, oh hell yeah I can. I luckily grew up reading Tarzan, Conan, James Bond, Matt Helm, John Carter, and superhero comics of all kinds.

I realize I should be wringing my hands, wondering whether someone who can watch a multicolored robot turn back and forth into a car and a rocket firing death machine without blinking an eye, will be able to handle a larger than life character like my icy cold killer, Lynn Montoya in THE LURE OF HELL. I take my entertainment where I can get it. No wringing of hands for me. Think about it. Authors worrying about the same people eating up goofy looking, blue skinned, dragon riders going ‘wow, that’s so realistic’ – but reading about a larger than life fictional character or plot-line throws them into open mouthed, stunned disbelief. So funny.  :)

Anyway, it’s on to editing and formatting for me today... and of course fixing cars and trucks.  :)