New Books from Pals

Zestful Blog Post #282

Now and then a pal publishes a book! Here are two recent ones I’m happy to share out. Congratulations to Bev Prescott and Neil Plakcy.

In the year 2092, climate change has transformed the face of Earth. Storms, disease, famine, thirst and war show no mercy on the living. Sharon Clausen, a self-reliant farmer, has a secret apple tree—a tree that keeps Sharon and her wife, Eve, fed. 

The only other people who know of her secret, or so she thinks, is Dr. Ryan, a long-time confidant, and his wife, Areva. Once a month, Sharon and Eve travel from Maine to Boston to trade apples with Dr. Ryan for Eve’s leukemia treatment. Everything suddenly changes when Eve is kidnapped and the Ryans are murdered. Sharon learns that her best kept secrets are known and coveted by a man known as the Strelitzia—a coldly practical villain.

Sharon sets out on a harrowing journey across North America to rescue Eve. Along the way, she teams up with an Inuit refugee boy, a stray dog named Erik the Red, an eccentric former school teacher, a jujitsu master, an Argentinian opera star, and a brilliant scientist who leads an alliance of eclectic people known as the Qaunik. Together, this ragtag group battle horrific storms, an unrelenting desert, terrifying criminal gangs, feral humans, and the Strelitzia.

In the end, Sharon must face her greatest challenge—risk all that she loves for something much greater than herself.

Buy it HERE.

Special Agent Angus Green is still in his twenties, and his red hair and good looks often make people underestimate him, but he’s a smart, fearless cop who believes in the FBI motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.

Fort Lauderdale retiree Frank Sena is working with pawn shop owner Jesse Venable to retrieve a painting stolen from Frank’s uncle, a gay Venetian killed during the Holocaust. Angus volunteers to help Frank, and discovers Venable is the subject of a task force looking into smuggling immigrants out of war-torn countries in the Middle East.

Angus, who knows nothing about art and speaks no Italian, may be in over his head as he is assigned to befriend, and ultimately betray, Venable. But with the help of his Italian-speaking brother and his art-loving boyfriend, he may be able not only to retrieve the painting, but solve a smuggling case and potentially save thousands of lives.

The investigation will take him from the sun-drenched rooftops of Venice to a private yacht speeding down Fort Lauderdale’s New River. Along the way, he’ll learn the true meaning of survival.

Buy it HERE.

If you’re a subscriber to this blog or to my newschat, do let me know when you’ve published a book, and I’ll shout it out one way or another, OK?

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The Power of Thank You

Zestful Blog Post #259

Last week I got an email from a high school student in Los Angeles who asked if I would serve as his writing mentor for his senior essay project. As you might guess, I get asked to help writers a lot, from young people to elderscribes (yeah, I just made that word up!), and I have to say no to almost everybody. Because I hate saying no, I sometimes try to give the person a bit of help anyway. In this case, I did a little research and came up with two suggestions for the young man: a possible local mentor, and an article I found that I thought might be helpful to his project.

It’s funny, but when the student wrote back saying thank you, and that he understood, I felt this surge of warmth toward him. Many times, I don’t get a thank-you, and I predicted this young stranger would not bother. But I was happily wrong. I’ve given back-cover or inside-pages book blurbs to authors who never said thanks. Isn’t that amazing? It takes time to do those things. (When they ask the next time, guess what I’m gonna say?) One does not help people solely to be thanked, but it certainly does your heart good when it happens, and you remember it. I’ll always have warm feelings toward certain people I’ve helped who’ve gone out of their way to say thank you, or even send a little gift. (I have my eye on a 2018 Corvette, blue, hardtop, in case you’d really like to get on my good side. Seriously. Awesome car.)

[I kind of think this is a picture of gratitude. It's a prayer rug from the 19th century. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.]

The times I’ve neglected to say thank you (and realized it) still bother me, even though they were when I was young and didn’t really know better. Not long ago I thanked a newsletter editor for highlighting one of my books, and she wrote back thanking me for the thank-you, saying it was “rare to get a thank-you from an author.”

So I guess my humble bit of professional wisdom today is: A thank-you is not only polite, but it actually goes some distance in networking and plain old building of human capital. So, you know, win-win. Such a simple but powerful thing! We’re all much more eager to help someone who expressed gratitude for a prior favor.

I might add, thank you for reading, and thank you for being my friend!

Do you have a thank-you, or a didn’t-thank-you story to share? Tell us in a comment!

And hey, before signing off today, I want to give a call-out to three pals with new (or newer) fiction. They are all good people and good writers!

Neil Plakcy:  In His Kiss

  

Jessica Strawser:  Not That I Could Tell

Lucy Jane Bledsoe: (preorder for release date next month)  The Evolution of Love

If I’ve missed noting a new or newer book by you here, lemme know, OK? You have my email addy.

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Inside Interior Dialogue

Zestful Blog Post #167

Before getting on to today’s post, here are a few announcements about new books by friends:

Congratulations to BJ Phillips, whose first novel, Hurricane Season, is now out from Desert Palm Press! That first one is always so special… We hear there’s more in the pipeline from BJ. (See the book and more about her at her web site, linked to her name just above.)

And it’s high time for a plug for my buddy and all-around gentleman (hey, those two things are not mutually exclusive) Neil Plakcy, who keeps writing and publishing top-selling books in several genres. A slew of his new books are featured on the front page of his website. I admire Neil’s work ethic and prodigious output. He’s really a role model for me, and what’s more, he’s a fellow Floridian—as is BJ, coincidentally.

I might add that both Neil and I will be at the Novelists, Inc. conference at St. Pete Beach later this year. We’ll be participants, not presenters. Novelists, Inc., or NINC, is an association of professional authors who are committed to a) writing quality fiction and b) selling the hell out of it. I’ll let you know how that conference goes!

Have I mentioned that I’ll be doing the Florida Writers Conference in Altamonte Springs this year? Sorry if this is a repeat, but they’ve put up much more information on their website now. I’ll be presenting a couple of workshops, participating in a panel discussion, and will also be available for individual conferences. They cost extra, but all the money goes to FWA and its special programs for aspiring authors.

Oh, and gosh, local friends alert! Join me at the Selby Library in Sarasota (the main one with the pudgy white columns downtown) at 6 p.m. this coming Tuesday, July 5. I’ll be doing “Looking for Trouble: Doing Research for Fiction is not for Sissies.” More here. It’s free.

OK, so the latest compendium from Writer’s Digest Books is freshly available, Crafting Dynamic Dialogue: The Complete Guide to Speaking, Conversing, Arguing, and Thinking in Fiction. It has four chapters by me, as well as multiple chapters from other WD stalwarts such as James Scott Bell, Jeff Gerke, and Gloria Kempton. And hey, gosh, the first reviewer on Amazon said this, in part: "The two chapters on Dialogue and Suspense by James Scott Bell and Internal Dialogue by Elizabeth Sims, are worth twice the price of this fine volume."

So, cool. Two of my chapters are excerpts from You’ve Got a Book in You, and a third is a reprint of one of my articles for WD magazine. The fourth, “Understanding Internal Dialogue,” is original to the book. The excellent Cris Freese, editor of the book, invited me to write something on internal dialogue, and I gladly took up the challenge.

I see this post is already getting long, but I wanted to include an in-depth excerpt from the chapter, and here it is:

[Excerpt begins]

For both form and format, you can select something that feels right for you and your manuscript’s style and voice. Read closely to distinguish the differences in the six versions of this passage:

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. He felt like robbing a liquor store. Would a knife be sufficient? He didn’t know. [Entire passage, including inner voice, is third person, past tense.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense; inner voice is first person, present. And the inner voice is rendered in direct thought-speech.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [The identical passage as above, with Marco’s thoughts in italics.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. I sat at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is first person, past tense. The inner voice, in direct thought-speech, is first person, present.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should, he thought. Be something to do, anyway. He had his knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense. The inner voice is first person, past (though verging on present), and the narrative resumes in third person, past, in the final sentence.]

Saturday night comes, and still Sheila doesn’t call. I sit at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should rob that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Everything is first person, present.]

Any of these forms are correct, and they all have slightly different flavors—some seem more formal, some less. First person always reads as more informal and immediate. Just be as consistent as you can, once you’ve made your choice.

[End of excerpt]

This is the kind of attention to detail that marks out serious authors!

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