L.A. to Atlanta - And Still I Write

I am a transplant from Los Angeles to Atlanta. I will admit that my heart will always be in L.A., though I've lived in Atlanta for 10 years, and I appreciate the benefits of living in the south. The cost of living is way better, and two of my children and their families are here, even though I still have a son and his family in L.A.  For the latter reason, I do at times feel torn between the two cities. When I'm in L.A., I yearn to move back. It calls to me like an old lover - the smell, look and feel of it all are so familiar and so comfortable. And trust me, I will always be a Laker girl at heart. But when I arrive in Atlanta and see the cost of living differences, and the roots I've set up here, I'm glad I'm here. It's still new to me, it's a challenge, and I found my true love here in my forever mate. But oh how great it would be to be in two places at one time. Two Places at One Time - a title?

Born and raised in L.A., with my dad being a well-known musician and my mom being an actress, I was exposed to the entrainment lifestyle early on, as the Beach Boys and Sammy Davis Jr. would often come to our home and I would go to the recording studio with my father. Later, when I was four years old, my parents opened a dress shop and a restaurant in L.A, and later, after they divorced, my mom opened a gym and several real estate offices. They were never the 9-to-5 types. They were very creative, type-A for sure, and they definitely had entrepreneurial spirits. And as such, I took after them, becoming a model, commercial actress, talk show host, TV news reporter, etc., and then, eventually, at the age of 40, I found my true gift - writing.

I sat down to write my life story in 1998, and one year later, I turned what was to have been non-fiction, into a fiction novel called May December Souls. I shopped it and was rejected dozens of times, but after talking to Michael Baisden who suggested that I self-pub my book, I did just that and released it in 2000. By 2001 I had an agent and a two-book deal with Harper Collins. Since then I have written over twenty titles (which includes novellas, anthologies, and titles under my pen names). I have not looked back. 2018 will mark a 20 year milestone in my career. Time flies when you find your passion!

After moving from L.A. to Atlanta, I found that a lot of true readers in the south are more likely to come to an author event than in celebrity-driven California. A lot of those who came to my events in Cali were my supportive friends. Also, when I'm on tour, most of my events are on the east coast. The cost of travel from the ATL is less expensive than flying to say NY from L.A. or to Florida from L.A. What I do love about L.A. is that because I was born and raised there, and I know a lot of people, some business owners and friends are very accommodating about setting up events and showing up when I'm in town.

Most of my titles are set in L.A. and Atlanta, though I have titles that are set in Florida, Nevada, and internationally as well. My next title will be set in both Texas and Alabama.

The bottom line is that wherever I am, whichever city I live in, my love of writing makes itself at home in my heart, and that's what's important. But I'm old enough and wise enough to know that what's most important is the love of family and friends. Wherever I end up, I will serve my purpose for being born: which is to make a difference, love and be loved, and reach one, teach one by giving back.

And yes, you can take this girl out of California, but you cannot take California out of this girl, lol! Any transplants out there?

Happy Writing!!

What's Location Got to Do with it?

I live in Baltimore. I know what you’re thinking…The Wire, The Riots, burnt out buildings, murder capital. I’m in the county, not the city, but even then there’s much more to Baltimore than that.

Baltimore, however, is not what readers on this blog associate me with. That’s because I’m always talking of that tiny guitar shaped island nestled in the Eastern Caribbean. St. Kitts. I spent the first 24 years of my life there. It is home. It will always be home. Some of the views I had from my veranda included lush green mountainsides in the center of the island, gently sloping to the serene azure Caribbean Sea.  Blue skies across which sailed puffy white clouds, and endless golden sun kissed the melange of trees waving in the warm sea breeze.

Here I was inspired to write much prose, mostly in a dialect of English with no formal written format. So how did I end up in Baltimore?  While you don’t have a choice in where you are born, people think you have a choice in where you live out your adult life. I don’t believe that. Where we live is chosen for us by education, employment, family, and love, just to name a few.

I left my little piece of paradise to pursue an education, because as beautiful as the island is, there were no
Universities on the island at that time. After a brief stint in the US Virgin Islands, I moved to Brooklyn, New York. The contrast couldn’t be more obvious. No mountains, no beach, no cluster of trees (at least where I lived). After 4 years of 3hr commutes underground in a subway, of leaving in the dark and returning in the dark for 4 months of the year, I couldn’t take it another minute. I moved the Charlottesville Virginia to pursue a doctorate.

I was enamored with Charlottesville. It was countryside, with endless trees, beautiful greenery and stunning architecture and lots of history. Most of all, everything I needed was within a one mile radius of my dwelling place; no 3 hour commute (Yeah!). However within two weeks I had seen all there was to see, done all there was to do in Charlottesville (except skiing, snowboarding, white water rafting , hunting and drinking myself to oblivion at the many bars on The Corner, all of which didn’t interest me in the least). I was bored. The good news, it was a great place to focus on my dissertation research and keep fit.

When I received my PhD, after many years of a long distance engagement, and 3 years of a long distance marriage, I finally moved to Maryland to be with my husband.  The suburb of Baltimore County was my happy medium. Just twenty minutes outside the city meant our work commute was pretty short. Besides it allows us access to the many things Baltimore City has to offer. Yes there are burnt out buildings, yes there are pockets of high crime areas in the city, but there is so much more to Baltimore City. There’s the beautiful Inner Harbor with National Aquarium and Science Center, and Port Discovery Children’s Museum which is perfect for families with children. There are lots of arts and literary festivals, a writer’s dream. There is Peabody, the academy for the arts, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and many theaters where live performances could be seen and so much more. Unlike Charlottesville, there is enough cultural diversity to satisfy every palate.

But when I leave the city, I return to my sleepy suburban community where the streets are empty at nights, where little ghost and goblins, superheroes and princesses go trick-or-treating on Halloween, where lawns are elaborately decorated at Christmas (and just about every holiday). There isn’t an Ocean close by, but we are at the gateway of the Chesapeake. If boating was my thing (it’s not) I could walk to any of several mariners across the street and sail into the Chesapeake.

What I love the most about where I live is the parks. I go jogging/walking most morning in the park nearby. Other people walk their dogs and we have inadvertently formed a community. If a person is missing we wonder where that person is. I look around at the trees especially during the fall and spring with the blaze of colors and I am inspired.

So, how did living in all those places affect my writing? It didn’t. In St. Kitts, I found inspiration in the scenery, the people, and the culture. In New York, I found inspiration in people of all cultures and tongues riding the trains daily. In Charlottesville, I found inspiration in the greenery and the outdoors, and in Baltimore I find inspiration in all kinds of things.

Face it, whether you have a mountain vista, a sea view and trees in galore, or a brick wall, most of us write in an enclosed room facing only a computer, surrounded by four walls. So what does location have to do with writing? Not a darned thing.

Leave a Writer's Voice Alone

 

by Velda Brotherton

 

One of the worst things editors or critique groups can do is change a writer’s voice. So how do we recognize the difference in weird or poor writing and a unique voice? It’s not always easy. In fact many authors are not truly sure they have a distinctive voice.

Several qualities go to make up voice. One, of course, is a specific style we use to tell our stories. And we develop that style from childhood. Our mothers sang to us and told us stories. Our fathers recited tales of their own growing up. From the time we are very small we are developing a way of relating the way we communicate. Long before some of us become writers we have developed a specific voice.

Once we’ve decided we want to be writers, we are aware of the way we like to tell our stories. By then the rhythm we use is like a song. Of course there are specifics we have to learn to polish our writing, to make sure we are telling exciting stories. We learn to add conflict, to form scenes and sequels, to create characters and use all five senses, to add description sparingly within the action. These things can be taught.

The one thing that can’t be taught is the craft itself. Those who are talented, are creative, have vivid imaginations, and develop that unique voice, can learn to follow and eventually break the rules.

Our critique group has been around for 28 years or so, and we have helped a lot of novice writers hone their craft, polish their talent, and get published. One rule we always have tried to follow is never try to make every writer sound alike. In other words, allow them to write in their own beautiful voice.

 

Yo, I’ve Got a Book Over Here!

Almost six years ago, I heard those words we who write yearn to hear; a publisher said yes. The next step, I assumed, would be to lean back and rest upon my lush, green laurels and watch my book fly off the selves. But I quickly learned, life is not a story I get to write and I don’t have any laurels. (The best I can manage is a little basil from my back porch). In reality, my book was one of 250,000 books published in the United States that year. It was one year newer than the 250,000 books published the year before and would soon be shadowed by next year’s crop of books and eager authors. So the question every new author must ask is: After the frenzy of purchases by friends and family, what makes someone want to put down hard earned cash to buy your book? These are my experiences in trying to answer that question.

Soon after my first book was published, Facebook contacted me with a proposition. They would advertise my book on Facebook to millions of members free of charge and only if someone was interested in my book and clicked on the cover would they charge a few cents to my pre-setup account. Great publicity, I thought. You can target people based on their likes. People who “liked” NCIS would see the cover of my crime lab mystery. The more refined I got, the higher the cost per click. I put together a very witty slogan and CLICK, CLICK, CLICK within a week I was twenty dollars poorer, my advertisement was popular but no books sold. Witty draws people in but not to buy books.

I changed the slogan to BUY THIS MYSTERY; fewer clicks but the same results. People are not on Facebook to buy books. Note to self: sell your book where people want to buy books. My next marketing strategy was Goodreads.com Fantastic place; readers wanting to read books, authors with books to sell. I signed up to give my book away. The end result…. 2682 people signed up to try and win a copy, 248 people clicked that they would like to read my book, 5 people read it and gave me some nice reviews. Not a slam dunk in sales but affirming.

So, back to the question, what makes someone want to put down hard earned cash to buy your book? After being on local radio stations, several newspaper articles, talks at book clubs, book signings at bookstores, book signings at libraries (libraries did much better than stores), book fairs and book festivals – in the end, the one thing that reliably sells your book is you; a connection with you, a smile from you, a question to you or a talk by you. At my first but book fair, I had a chair, a folding table and five books. Over time, I have added things to draw people to my booth; to make a connection. I can make enough through sales of the other products to pay for the festivals and have been to some of the biggest. Two excellent ones are the LA Times Festival of Books and Tucson’s Festival of Books. Few of us have laurels, even fewer can sell a book on our name alone but all of us can say, in our own way, “Yo, I’ve got a book over here. Come look!”

Marlon James and the Man Booker Prize: A Caribbean Perspective

Marlon James

The Caribbean is my birthplace and my current home, so it's with more than a soupçon of pride that I read the news last week that the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015, the biggest UK book award, is none other than Jamaican Marlon James. The winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is the first by a Jamaican author ever to be shortlisted. James joins Trinidad-born VS Naipaul who won in 1971.

James's path to glory is frighteningly familiar: we hear variations on this story in the publishing world all the time. As a gay man in a violently homophobic country, he could not just "be himself" and his dark nights of the soul brought him close to ending it all. "I knew I had to leave my home country — whether in a coffin or on a plane," he writes in "From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself", a March 10, 2015 essay in the Times. Despondent after receiving 70 rejections for his first novel, John Crow's Devil, he deleted the story from his hard drive, recovering it at the urging of a writer friend. It was finally published in 2005 and became a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His second novel, The Book of Night Women (2009), won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award. A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) won the fiction category of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature before going on to win the Man Booker.

The Caribbean region has had its fair share of writers who have won prestigious international prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature (Trinidadian novelist VS Naipaul in 2001, St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott in 1992, Saint-John Perce of Guadeloupe in 1960) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Trinidadians Earl Lovelace, VS Naipaul and Lawrence Scott, Jamaican Erna Brodber, and others). Several others have been shortlisted. Then there are the diasporic Caribbeans, usually children of Caribbean migrant parents, such as Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy who between them have won the Man Booker, the Orange, the Whitbread and others.

The region is always inordinately proud when our people "make it big" in the wider world, for a number of reasons. Even though the Caribbean archipelago stretches almost two thousand miles from the Bahamas in the north to Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam in the south, most of the nations are mere flyspecks on the map when compared with the rest of the English-speaking and -writing world. The population of the entire region can probably be encompassed in one major metropolitan city, so in terms of numbers alone, the odds appear to be against us when it comes to winning major prizes.

There's more than just geographical fragmentation at play in the region; there's also the legacy of a historical reality where multiple races, ethnicities, religions and languages were all thrown together in the sink-or-swim scenario of colonization that involved dehumanizing systems of slavery, indentureship and genocide with all the attendant social and psychological fallout. Our history is ever with us, as evidenced by the deep-rooted insecurities, shaky identities and the persistent need for external validation. We battle our complexes on the cricket pitch, on the soccer field, in academia--and in our literature.

The history aside, the complications aside, there's the simple delight in seeing yet another of "ours" receive high accolades for work exceedingly well done. Good job, Marlon. We in the region are very proud your achievements and your contribution to our rich literary heritage.

~Liane Spicer

When It's No Longer Fan Fiction

I’m often asked how what I do—writing media tie-in fiction—differs from writing “fan fiction.” There’s been a slight increase in this sort of thing in the wake of Simon & Schuster’s announcement that they’re reviving their Star Trek: Strange New Worlds writing contest, which was an annual competition for a decade beginning in 1997. At least a few of you may recall that my so-called writing career was launched thanks to this contest, way back when.

Some news sites and individuals have incorrectly described this as a “fan fiction contest,” and I have to respectfully disagree with that labeling. I’m not trying to diminish fan fiction, or make any sort of judgment toward anyone who writes it. Instead, I simply feel the need to distinguish between fan fiction and writing for a licensed property such as Star Trek, Star Wars, or any other film, television, gaming, or other media entity you’d care to name.

“But aren’t those novels just approved fan fiction?” someone might ask, and I suppose it’s true to a certain extent. After all, I’m a huge Star Trek fan (read: “nerd”) and I write a lot of Star Trek fiction, so sure, one level what I do could be considered fan fiction.

'However, the way I see it, the main differences between fan fiction and licensed fiction boil down to two questions: 1) are you paid to write it; and/or 2) is it subject to oversight by a property owner, such as a film or TV studio, game company, and so on. Fan fiction doesn’t have to worry about meeting either of these criteria, and licensed fiction does.

That’s it. Neither of these measures is intended as a value judgment so far as the quality of a story, be it fan fiction or licensed material. After all, there's a lot of great fan fiction out there, some of the best stories date back decades. Will writing fan fiction lead to an opportunity to write a licensed novel or other product for a tie-in property? Most likely not, but “never” is a word I tend to use with great caution, particularly in this business.

Also, those interested in writing for licensed properties aren’t entirely without options. Amazon has taken an interesting lead in this department, with their “Kindle Worlds” concept, which offers several media and author-owned properties to which authors can contribute stories. Ever want to write a G.I. Joe, Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries, or Veronica Mars tale? Now you can, and get paid while doing it, and there are dozens of other “worlds” which also are available, covering a broad spectrum of genres. Again, as with the larger entities like Star Trek, Star Wars, Disney, Marvel, and so on, the writer gets paid, and these stories are managed and approved by an editor and the owner of the property in question.

So, if you’re itching to play in someone else’s literary sandbox, this might be a way to do it. There certainly are worse ways to have a bit of fun and maybe get paid to do it, after all.

Your Novel Is a Race Horse

 I guess everybody knows American Pharoah won the Triple Crown, the ultimate honor in horseracing and the first horse to accomplish that in thirty-seven years. 

I thought about all the preparation and work that went into accomplishing such a feat.  And then I thought, “That’s much like writing a novel.”

For the racehorse, there’s lots of training over some years, something like the work and preparation necessary to develop the writing skills. A racehorse must be lean and strong, just like your writing – lean and strong. Neither the racehorse nor the book can have a lot of fat.  Both need strong bones (structure). For either to win, it needs superior muscles (strong verbs).

When the race starts, the horse must be out of the gate fast to secure a good running lane.  Your book needs to start fast, with a compelling hook on the first page.  Without a good start, the horse will have a long race of catching up.  Forget the enticing hook at the beginning of your book and the reader may put it down and never read it.

With horse races and books there is a danger of a weak middle. This makes it difficult for both animal and writer to ever regain the lead and finish a winner.

And both need a strong finish. How many races have been lost when the horse in second place gives a little extra and finishes just a nose ahead of the frontrunner?  For the writer, the ending must be strong. It’s the last thing the reader sees, remembers.  The ending can cause the reader to immediately look for another book by this author, to tell friends about this great book, to recommend it on social media. Or, the reader can put it away, not mention it to anybody and avoid picking up another novel by that author.

A true champion horse needs little encouragement. He takes the bit and charges out. He intends to be ahead of the others in the race. He will do his best to finish first.  A great story can actually lead the author in the right direction. Characters will speak to the writer, demand to be heard, dictate how the plot unfolds. The wise jockey gives the horse his head. The smart writer pays attention to what the characters need, and often will follow their lead.

Not all great racehorses win the Triple Crown, and not all great books will sell a million copies. But the really good racehorses will win races and the really good novels will gain a following. 

Horses try to avoid being listed as, “Also ran.”  And the writer doesn’t want to be listed as “Also published.” 

Aim for more.

James R. Callan