Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Coming Attractions
I've had a number of people ask about future novels in the The Richard Series. The Red Scarf is the first of five novels I have written, all set in the mid to late 1940s with the same set of characters. I know having four unpublished manuscripts ... more

Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Coming Attractions
I've had a number of people ask about future novels in the The Richard Series. The Red Scarf is the first of five novels I have written, all set in the mid to late 1940s with the same set of characters. I know having four unpublished manuscripts sitting around would drive a lot of authors crazy. However, when I started writing, getting published wasn't my goal. At first, I started with short stories that were comical, simple, and entertaining. My readers---actually they were listeners---were my very young grandchildren. One thing led to another and I started grouping them into novels. I guess, if nothing else, I'm productive, because when I started putting these exaggerated remembrances into novel form, I was finishing one of them about every four months. Each novel is some 200 pages of first person stories told by Richard, the town paper boy.

Well, as most authors will tell you, sooner or later all writers want to get published. When that thought started creeping into my mind, I went the route of most writers and started submitting. It seemed so easy. The first and only submittal of The Red Scarf went to August House, and weeks later they called. The Red Scarf was published in 2007, and I was off to a fast start with a novel that is selling very well to all ages. However, things have slowed down since that first success, and my subsequent novels are still in the submittal progress.

Now the coming attractions: Currently, The Yankee Doctor, the second of the series, is being read by two publishing houses. Of course, I think it's the better than The Red Scarf, but I'll have to wait and see how a publisher views it. I will say this: In both The Red Scarf and The Yankee Doctor there are some hilarious scenes, but one scene in The Yankee Doctor tops them all. In a future post I'll include at least part of this scene. It has to do with the boys trying to run the evil doctor out of town----with---roaches? Pretty funny, if I do say so myself. I actually laughed out loud sitting there at the word processor.

I'll include an excerpt in my next post.

Thursday, March 26, 2009
Characters should be----well 'Characters'
Volumes have been written about how characters can give that extra spice to a novel, and because that's true, every author spends hours honing and developing the secondary players in their novels. Why? Think of a hit novel... more

Thursday, March 26, 2009
Characters should be----well 'Characters'
Volumes have been written about how characters can give that extra spice to a novel, and because that's true, every author spends hours honing and developing the secondary players in their novels. Why? Think of a hit novel---say Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In my opinion, the real, but almost unbelievable characters in that book, put it in the extraordinary category. I don't know about other sections of the country, but the South is full of characters. We've got some real ring-tail-tooters down here, and most southern authors have very little difficulty thinking up a special secondary player for their novels. All they have to do is think back to their hometown and sit down at the word processor. Maybe it's something in the water, air, or inbreeding, but every southern town I've every been in has yards and yards of these guys and gals.

When I started writing my novel, The Red Scarf, I took out a pad and made notes about every character I grew up with in the small village of Norphlet. After the manuscript was accepted for publication, I met with the publishers and we sat around the table and discussed the novel. One of them asked, "How did you come up with such colorful characters?" I smiled and said, "I didn't make them up. They were just some of the folks from my home town." I guess when a novel has characters such as Peg, the one-legged pool hall owner, Wing, his one-armed brother, the town marshal, Doc, the wheelchair ridden newsstand owner who pretends he's president Roosevelt, and Big Six, the wild sorry roughneck, it's a little hard to believe they all lived in a little village of 650 folks. But they did.

Maybe fictitious characters work for some authors, but as far as I'm concerned you can't beat the real thing.