Beautiful Sunday morning run...

This blog has quickly begun focusing on Writing and Running. Since those two topics seem to take up the majority of my time - and since I often do both at the same time - it makes sense. This morning, I woke up with optimistic plans of a morning run around the lake followed by a trip out to the beach. Sadly, as has happened in recent weeks, I opted out of the beach. I justified it with the partial cloud cover and fact that I finished my run sprawled out on the grass near the lake and got a sufficiently large dose of Vitamin D.

But, the truth of the matter is that I simply didn't want to drive 2 hours round-trip to the beach... that isn't that pretty when compared to my hometown, Destin beaches anyway.

So, I hit the path around Lake Baldwin and pushed through the early morning humidity.

• The closed loop around the lake is great for me. It's 2.5 miles, so I can do maintenance runs of 3 laps or longer runs of 4-5 loops pretty easily
• The breeze coming in off the lake breaks up the humidity and drops the temperature a couple degrees
• The lake itself acts as a weather break, often forcing weather systems to split as they near and allowing for more runs without rain
• The talent level of the Baldwin Park runners makes for some nice sight-seeing
• The pleasant atmosphere and safe pathway allows my mind to wander and work up some new thoughts on the sequel to my first book, Number 181 (Get it here) and some new ideas that keep popping into my head. Sadly, some are so complex I'm not even sure how to put them on paper. And, I have so many random thoughts while running that to write them all would require 10 years of my life and result in 25 books books of drastically different genres.

Lake Baldwin - Where ducks go to duel

I've started using the MapMyRun app on my phone since it has more functionality than my iPod Nano. Also, since my Nike+ sensor crapped out, the Nano has been used more due to familiarity than anything else. Since my phone can pay music, the Nano has quickly become useless. The 7.5 miles went by a little slow today, or so I thought. It must have been the heat and/or humidity that made me feel sluggish, because I certainly wasn't. I ended up with 7 1/2 miles in 1hr5, a nice 8:40 pace when you consider I stopped for some water and to drop off my shirt after the first loop. I lost a minute or so at the car since I didn't stop the recording, but it was nice to get free of the shirt for the rest of the run.

The trick now is figuring out how to best plan for the next few weeks. I'll be doing my (Twit on a Road Twip 2012) thing next weekend and hitting some races around the country. But, with GORUCK DC thrown in there on July 4th, determining how and when to push myself is going to be difficult. If I run a half marathon race next Saturday (spoiler?), I don't want to push myself so hard that it makes training for the next couple weeks difficult.

Of course, I know that when the time comes, I'll end up pushing just as much as the runners next to me. Who am I kidding?
_

Number 181 available in eBook format

After much formatting work (I'm somewhat of a perfectionist... "Why is there an extra space between paragraphs two and three on page 217?!"), my novel, Number 181, is available in eBook form! GetItHere At this point, I'm just so fascinated by the process that I'm enjoying the steps it's taking to work through development, distribution, and marketing.

"Look! I printed a real-life book, and it has my name on it!"
"A literary agent? I suppose it couldn't hurt to look..."
"WTF is a query letter?!"

Anyway, after talking with a growing number of friends that read primarily on eReaders and fighting the urge to get my own for years, I purchased a Kindle and decided to format my book for portable devices. This turned out to be more difficult than I had planned simply because I had it looking all nice and pretty in a PDF, and that don't necessarily fly in EPUB format.

The Kindle version through Amazon was straight forward and simple, I must say. Within about 30 minutes, I had uploaded a digital version, and it was cleared for sale by the end of the day. I even downloaded a copy to have for myself (And, to have an actual sale in the Kindle store. I'm ranked 152,324!).

The Nook and iDevice versions are still being cleared through their respective processes. (This is taking longer than I'd imagine, but my only reference point is the rapid Amazon approval, so I'm working with a small data set.) Regardless, I'm pleased to report that my little novel is looking more and more like an actual piece of literature... contrary to the complete incompetence most people associate with the author!

_

Five Books to Read: #1 - Nothing Like It in the World

After completing my own book (GetItHere), I thought it worthwhile to discuss books that shaped my mindset and style, those books that meant enough to me to warrant multiple readings and quiet reflection. One of those five books (all of which will be discussed in this blog but in no particular order) is detailed below...

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There are noteworthy decades in our county's history when great things occurred: the 1770s, the 1800s, the 1930s. Few have defined our nation more than the 1860s. The entire world watched as the United States spent four of the bloodiest years in history fighting for its future. It was horrific and fascinating, and the countries of the world watched to see how the globe would be shaped. Warfare blossomed into the modern era as weapons and strategies evolved. Our nation came out of the war stronger and with a solid identity, and the world anxiously waited to see how we would put our mark back on the planet after so much internal strife. Were we a warring nation on the hunt for new enemies? What should they expect?

The answer came in the guise of a road, a special road of gravel and iron. Railroads were nothing new to the world, the system having thought to have been perfected by Europeans decades earlier. The Civil War showed the importance of the rails, though. Where we were once tied to waterways that offered trade and transport, we now were anchored to the Iron Horse.

But, where the Europeans came up short was their vision of the possibilities. In 1863, while the war still raged on, Abraham Lincoln signed the authorization of a railroad to stretch from coast-to-coast, a transcontinental railroad that would connect Sacramento with Omaha and turn a 6-month journey by carriage into a 6-day journey by train.

Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose is the compelling story of key participants in the endeavor from both sides, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, as they churn toward each other on the crest of a wave of metal. As he does in all his historical novels, Ambrose opens the door on a fascinating time period in all its grim detail. The keys to the story are the characters, though, and all but the most learned of scholars will be unsure of the fates of those involved. Visionaries key to the construction of the railroad such as Grenville Dodge and Theodore Judah are detailed in a way that allows you to root for them against the blatantly corrupt methods practiced by the businessmen of the era.

For those that are interested in the time period or the construction of the railroad, the book goes into great detail on the people and techniques of the time. Hardships are extreme, successes rare. The poorly treated Chinese in the west fight their way through walls of rock in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the east, hordes of union and confederate soldiers, fresh from the battlegrounds of Virginia, breed hate and discontent as they lay rails and pour grade next to each other along the open ground in the Midwest. The technical achievement is unrivaled, but the biggest takeaway from the book is leadership, the benefits to great and the disasters due to a lack.

The lessons to be gained are countless. Modern students of leadership can learn the evolution of leadership from 150 years ago to now. The aspects that defined the day are markedly different than those currently utilized, for numerous reasons, and each can be a teaching opportunity. Examples of the dangers of naivete rear their heads, most notably in the story of Judah, a brilliant engineer that found himself far out of his element when dealing with the Big Four backers of the Central Pacific Railroad, a group including Leland Stanford of university acclaim.

How do you convey your vision to others?
How do you ensure that your vision holds when others become involved?
How do you persevere when setbacks occur each day, any one of which would be proper justification for abandoning the task?

It's a testament to the men of the day and the spirit of a nation that such a creation was begun during the darkest times of our country, only to be joined by the hardened men of both sides who came together to complete a world wonder. By 1869, the two railroad groups were laying track alongside each other as politicians debated where to lay the connecting spike. One hundred years before the world would sit together and watch Americans land on the moon, they were running to stores for newspapers detailing the joining of two sides of a nation. It was THAT big a deal.

And, Stephen Ambrose does an amazing job of making sure the reader is there for every bit of it.

_

Making a more 'lean' manuscript...

The words I have written and turned into Number 181 (GetItHere)are exactly what I envisioned when I started putting pen to paper. Ok, it was mostly fingers to keyboard, but there was some actually pen work, as well. As it sits now, the book is about 143,000 words, and I could care less whether it is 50,000 of 500,000. It's as long as it should be.

But, I've come to realize that most agents and publishers are extremely wary of first time novelists that come up with a manuscript that... cumbersome. Sure, Stephen King has 800 page books, but he's got a following that will forgive him some exposition if it leads to a good story. It also doesn't help that much of the first part of my book *builds* to action rather than opening the door to explosions right out of the gate. I'm extremely proud of the first few chapters, chapters that I went back and added when I felt characters needed a bit more development and history.

But, agents ask for the first chapters of a book as sample of one's work. They don't ask for the first action scene or biggest twist. So, though I am very proud of the first chapters in my book, I've made the executive decision to remove them when offering my manuscript to agents for their perusal. By my estimation, it will bring the final word count down to the 125,000 word range, a much less frightening number to agents, or so I'm told. Obviously, you should 'tighten up' your work before offering it for representation, but there is little extraneous info in Number 181. If it weren't for the 'Perception of Length' in the literary world... I wouldn't touch it.

It will have the novel starting where I initial had it placed months ago (Boom! Explosions!), and still tell the same story. But, it will lack some back story on compelling characters. Thankfully, Shawn's piece will be unaffected. And, let's be honest, he's the one that matters!

The book available at Lulu will remain unchanged as I feel it matches the vision I had for the story. But, I think it may cause difficulties going forward with representation.

Make no mistake, though, if I get an agent to bite on the abridged manuscript, I will share the fact that I have 15,000 more words of awesomeness a click away that I could throw back in to the mix!

This whole process is fascinating to me... But, I fear the day my squirrel-like attention span snaps to the forefront, and I move on to other endeavors.

_

1) Write well. 2) Be interesting.

As some of you know, I had little to no intention of having my book *cough*GetItHere*cough* be anything more than a spine sitting up on my shelf that I could point to as my own creation. Opening that first box from the printer and seeing an actual book with my name on it... wow.

Once I finished writing it, though, I became part of a writing community that surprised me with terms that were foreign to me or that I hadn't considered: Query, YA, AAR... Agent. So, I thought to myself, what does it actually take to find an agent to represent you? What does it take to get a publisher? The long and the short of it is that it's like any interview.

You need something to be sold. Note: This helps if it's actual writing experience, but what's important here is a completed manuscript. My research into contacting agents shows that a surprising number of writers contact literary agencies without having finished (or started?!) their book. Huh? I don't get that at all... Perhaps they don't want to 'waste' time writing if no one will buy it. As someone who wrote for the sake of the product and not the sale, I don't follow that reasoning.

You need a résumé. This is separate from the "I have been published in such-and-such magazine," though that's a great start. That stack of résumés on your bosses desk that he or she is sifting through in order to find the next salesman? The literary equivalent of that is the query. It's a brief introduction letter that has to 1) explain your novel, 2) explain who you are, 3) tell why you are the one to write the story, 4) show what books on the market are similar to give context, 5) show how it's different from those same books since no one wants to read the same thing, 6) explain what .............

....... 47) offer the word count, and 48) convey the voice of your book.

All in about four short paragraphs. Oh, and it's thrown in a pile with dozens of other queries. And, you're not filling a desk in a sales office that NEEDS to be filled. It's entirely possible that the whole stack will get skimmed over and slid into the trash can.

THIS FASCINATES ME.

I couldn't wait to get started, even if it meant no one ever answered my queries. I was mesmerized by the process. The amount of 'help' and advice online is staggering, though most agree on the main points (except for the surprising things that are totally contradictory). Entire books are devoted to How to Write Queries.

And, what have I learned? What insight do I have to offer? Easy.

It's all crap. Not queries, mind you, but the arduous process to get the perfect query. Each agent wants different things. Some want information about you, the writer. Others want sample chapters. Others want a detailed synopsis of the entire manuscript.

But, the truth is, as long as you can write, it'll work itself out. You just need a story people want to read. Agents WANT to like your book. They WANT to sign you and start lobbying for a publisher. It's how they get paid. So, here's my full-proof way to get an agent. Trust me, this will not fail... not a chance.

1) Write well.
2) Be interesting.

There ya go. That's it. As long as you aren't a crappy writer, you're through the first wicket. [Note: This is much more difficult than it sounds.] After that, all you need to do is get noticed. Be funny. Be unique (not just your writing... YOU). Be spontaneous. Be random.

STAND OUT.

Just like a desk job: be good at what you do, and be a pleasure to be around... and you have nothing to worry about.

_

Pictures of my work at NASA...

Like the protagonist in Number 181 ,Shawn Kidd, (check the link on this page to buy the book!) I have ties to NASA. I've spent ten years working for the space agency in Florida, Texas, and California, and it's led to some great memories...

Standing on the launch pad prior to liftoff of Discovery in 2002

One of my many stops in the world. DC in 2009

My 2010 scene from Transformers 3:Dark of the Moon with Shia Labeouf and Tyrese

Being interviewed by the History Channel's Modern Marvels in 2006

Launch support of Aquarius from Vandenberg, AFB in 2011

Summer of 2011: Crowds line the rope during the last rollout of the Space Shuttle

Noteworthy numbers from Number 181 (Um... other than 181).

458 - # of pages

33 - # of chapters
143,358 - # of Words
0 - # of times I changed the name of the protagonist, Shawn Kidd
41 - # of times I changed the name of his girlfriend, Sarah Melissa Elizabeth Alexis Winters
4 - # of months the book's timeline spans
5 - # of baseball-related references
3 - # of Alexander the Great references
0 - # of The Great Gatsby references
7 - Years from the penning of the first word to the last (My genius must percolate.)
81 - # of mercenaries/assassins
3 -# of booming explosions
10 - # of Force Recon Marines that make an appearance
5 - # of languages spoken by characters (Note: Pig Latin is not one of them)
5 - # of countries visited (Canada counts!)
6 - # of serious, physical injuries suffered by Kidd
Too many to count - # of serious, mental injuries suffered by Kidd

[Excerpt #4] A piece from further along...

I've gotta say, I'm a big fan of including excerpts from Number 181 in these posts. Since I know the context of each and its criticality to the story, it is that much more interesting to me. I think each one is a window into the story and the novel's style, but it only hints at everything going on in the scene. It's a lot of fun to pull out excerpts that inform and tease...

Kidd skidded around the corner and sped off east down the hallway. His initial frantic dash had been in order to outrun the gunfire, but now he sprinted toward the doorway to the study in the hopes of getting there before the three flankers hit the far corner. He angled hard toward it, twisting around a corner hall table, and reached for the handle of the door, throwing a shoulder at it at the same time. The door swung open, and he crashed into the room, diving to the ground and expecting bullets to chase him in as they hit the doorframe. No sounds reached him, though, and the door remained in one piece. Not knowing how much time he had before the bad guys turned down the corridor, he hurriedly jumped up and dragged his bag down off the bench.

He ripped the zipper open and tossed the arm and head across the room like they were packing material. Grabbing the pistol and knife, he returned them to the holster and sheath on his chest, already feeling more comfortable. As quickly as he could, he drew the G36 from the bag and made sure it was loaded and on its semiautomatic setting. A glance back at the open doorway showed he still had no visitors. That was odd.

Sighting down the optics, he leaned out and covered the distant, shadowy corner. He could hear the thunder from the firefight in the foyer, but in front of him, there was nothing. Warily, he began down the corridor, crouched and hugging the inner wall. A minute later, he had reached the corner without encountering any signs of the flankers. Around the corner, though, he could hear a soft, rustling sound.

Carefully, he slid his eye around the edge. The flash he caught as the attackers opened fire nearly blinded him. A hail of bullets peppered the wall to his right as they let loose with a determined barrage. Though he didn’t chance another look, they poured fire at the corner. In the split second that he had a view, he knew why. While two had covered the corner with their weapons, a third had affixed a stubby box to one side of the hallway three-quarters of the way down. He was inserting something into the bottom of it, and Kidd needed no training to know an explosive when he saw it.

[Excerpt #3] About halfway through Number 181...

Below is another excerpt, this one from about halfway through Number 181. Kidd's been through a lot by this point in the story, so portraying him as confused and dazed isn't difficult. Here, however, it's been taken to an entirely different level thanks to an... event... that he doesn't yet understand.

Screams reached Kidd’s ears, their high-pitched whine slowly dropping to an identifiable roar. The muted rumble sounded distant and unreal. He strained to identify the direction they were coming from as they bounced off each of the surrounding walls. It took several moments before he realized they were his own.

His ears rang, and his throat and eyes burned.

He couldn’t breathe.

His first few attempts to take in a breath forced debris down his throat, but whether the hard, dusty pieces were rock or glass, he couldn’t tell. He rolled over onto his stomach and forced himself to cough violently. Detritus scratched his throat like sandpaper, and his violent throes caused a cascade of dust to pour off his head. The ringing continued incessantly, only to be joined by the far off sound of pops and alarms. Carefully, he brushed the area around his eyes clear, but even that small effort caused grit to slice the skin across his brow and cheek. He finally felt he had removed enough to risk opening his eyes, and he found the floor cracked and covered in destruction. Orange lighting crossed his vision as emergency lighting flashed across the room from the corridor outside the door. The lights above him in the room were out.

Outside the door.

Kidd climbed to his knees. There was no more door. He saw pieces of it scattered around the room, but the doorway had been completely obliterated, the frame gone. Now, a gaping hole was all that remained of that entire side of the room.

Flashes down the corridor accompanied the distant pops, and he suspected he was hearing electrical explosions on the fringes of his mind. He tried to shake some sense back into it, but that brought only more pain, so he collapsed against the back wall of the room and watched shredded bits of papers and dust rain down around him. Some stuck to the dozens of small lacerations he saw on his arms. He figured the rest of him was no better off and looked up in time to see someone sprint past the gaping hole at the other side of the room, their steps muffled.

Kidd stirred. Lights flashed in and out as he brought himself to his feet. Time was passing slowly… or was it quickly? Flecks of debris flitted across his view as he struggled toward the nonexistent wall. Glancing down the hallway, he was blinded by the orange glow of emergency lighting advancing across the sea of glass. The rotating amber glow swept across the wall and floor in a wide arc, and the reflected light scattered down the hallway toward him. Using the wall to stabilize himself, Kidd found out why. Glass from the opposite windows had blown out with such force that it embedded in the dry wall. The light danced. It was horrifically beautiful.

[Book Art] Final Cover Wrap

The cover wrap to the final paperback version of Number 181. I designed it myself, and I can be a bit overly-critical of my own work. But, I'm really pleased with the final product and am looking forward to the spine peeking out at me from my bookshelf (and my friend's!).

[Excerpt #2] Flashback

The novel has few quiet moments, and the majority tend to be sadness-tinged, self-evaluations. However, here is an excerpt from a chapter about a quarter of the way through the book that offers a critical moment in the protagonist's past in order to better understand his current situation. I've never been to this bar, but it's the kind of place I can only imagine... seemingly between worlds. Is it due to the mysteries of the bar itself? Or, is it due to the company one keeps?

He was sitting across from Alexis in a dim, dive bar off 4^th street downtown. It was their first date, and Shawn had tried to impress with a fancy dinner at a classy Italian place. But, the place had been booked, and they spent nearly two hours waiting for a table to open up. Neither of them noticed, the appetizer and drinks they ordered at the bar all the dinner they’d need. At Alexis’ suggestion, they moved to a quiet place around the corner, one of her favorites, lost in their conversation.

The jazz club was set back in an alley off one of the dark parking lots, its door a rusted steel vault. The only indication it was anything other than an abandoned rental space was the slim, mousey man that asked to see an ID as they neared. No name hung above the door, and the vault opened to reveal a pulsing haze, dark and melodic.

Twenty feet wide and miles deep, the bar swayed with the rhythm of the quiet tones, the trio of musicians in the near corner melting into the patchwork brick walls. They sat clustered around a dark black table stained with years of history and which mirrored the other furniture tossed throughout the club. Their three beers joined countless empties on the table, and the entire scene appeared to be as much a part of the bar as the stools or dark paintings adorning the walls. The music coursing through the air was better than Shawn had heard short of the old LPs he remembered his father listening to on rainy evenings.

It gave the impression of a private party. People dotted the tables and stools along the rough oak bar on the opposite wall, each lost in their own conversations and worlds. At one table, a group of four laughed silently to some unheard story. At another, a lone gentleman sat staring toward the wall sipping a cocktail. At yet another, an elderly couple sat in silence, seemingly content in simply being there together. They each melted into the bar. Part of it. Shawn felt he stuck out, an interloper in the scene of players that fit in such a way that implied they never left.

Shawn loved it. He breathed in the atmosphere and knew he wanted to remember it, his first experience with it. Alexis grabbed his hand and broke the spell, leading him to one of the back tables as they melted into the club’s canvas.

Draft synopsis for Number 181

One of the drafts for the cover synopsis of Number 181...

Researcher and self-proclaimed hermit, Shawn Kidd has few hobbies and fewer friends. His life has reached a crossroad, though, as his time in Texas comes to an end and he weighs the relationship that has bloomed against his return to Florida. Never one to take risks or assume responsibilities, Shawn is torn.

But, in one night, everything changes.

While an eighteen year old boy is found dead in the restroom of a ballpark, a wreck on a deserted interstate claims the life of a family of four. Thousands of miles away, a twelve year old girl is inexplicably shot through the window of her family’s twelfth floor condo.

These tragic deaths are merely the beginning of a coordinated assault on the United States by a global terrorist network. An unknown enemy has obtained a seemingly-insignificant and low security list – one with the names of 181 children on it - that is designed to find those that demonstrate the traits that make them ideal paralegals, analysts and agents for the FBI. The Reaper List.

But, these children know nothing of politics or war, nothing of their placement on this list, and nothing of why they are being targeted. But, one by one and over the course of one tragic night, all will be killed.

All but one.

All but Number 181.

[Excerpt #1] "Number 181" - Prologue

A few years ago, I decided to put to paper some thoughts I'd had on a story that had been rattling around in my head. It's been laid out in fits and starts, but I've finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. It's up to about 350 pages now, and I expect to put the finishing touches on and format a complete draft by June. Below is the prologue to start it off...

6 weeks ago...

Shawn Kidd had never died before. That went without saying for nearly everyone, but, in truth, he had never even had brushes with death in his 29 years. In fact, other than his recent broken finger, he had relatively few injuries given his active lifestyle.

So, he had nothing to compare with as his senses blurred and heart strained to keep his broken body alive. His heart had its own scars, though, and Shawn sensed the inevitable.

As he knelt, the soft snow enveloping his legs and welcoming him, the needles of pain that lanced through his body drifted to quiet numbness. He absently wondered how much of that was the frigid air and how much was due to the simple decision to close a door and not care to ever open another. He had reached the end of one of life’s journeys, and found himself not wanting another. He was done.

He stared down at the motionless form below him and felt nothing except the flow of warm blood down his face. The gore was obscene, and the crimson river gave drastic contrast to the dark night and virgin white snow. The majority wasn’t his, though. It belonged to the monster below him, a monster whose neck Shawn had slit in such a way that the small clearing they occupied was awash in carnage.

He slumped, his shoulders sagging forward. His soul was shattered and wrecked, but his body was no better. The wound on his bandaged hand had reopened and soaked the days-old wrapping in blood. He didn’t even want to think what damage had been done to his back. The sickening stench of melted fabric, metal, and flesh was only now becoming bearable, but steam and smoke continued to rise from the back of his vest where the flames had engulfed him. Countless cuts and bruises throbbed, but he felt none of them. He waited for blood loss to take him, for shock to set in and for what little life remained in him to settle into the snow.

The edges of his vision blurred as the blanket of snow seemed to rise and engulf the clearing. His mind registered the movement to his right, but he didn’t react. He didn’t care. And, when the bullet slammed into his temple, he welcomed the end.