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Gore Vidal (b. October 3): “Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note” & other quotes about writing

3 Oct

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Gore Vidal (born 3 October 1925, died 31 July 2012) wrote novels, screenplays and Broadway plays. His most widely regarded novels are Myra Breckinridge, Julian, Burr, and Lincoln, The City and the Pillar. His screen-writing credits included Ben-Hur which won the 1959 Academy Award for Best Picture.

He was also known for his feuds with Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. Remembered for his caustic wit, he referred to himself as a ‘gentleman bitch’ and has been described as the 20th century’s answer to Oscar Wilde. He was the last of a generation of American writers who served in World War II, including J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, and Joseph Heller.

 Gore Vidal’s Top 10 Quotes on Writing:

  1. Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.
  2. Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
  3. Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
  4. Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
  5. Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.
  6. How marvellous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.
  7. I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place.
  8. Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
  9. Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!
  10. You can’t really succeed with a novel anyway; they’re too big. It’s like city planning. You can’t plan a perfect city because there’s too much going on that you can’t take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

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Graham Greene (b. October 2): “Pain is easy to write about” & other quotes about writing

2 Oct

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Graham Greene (born 2 October 1904, died 3 April 1991) was an English author, playwright and literary critic who suffered from bipolar disorder. After several suicide attempts as a schoolboy, he was sent to a psychoanalyst who introduced him to his circle of literary friends and encouraged him to write. Greene was one of the few authors who managed to combine literary acclaim with widespread popularity, enjoying financial success and associating with T.S. Eliot, Ian Fleming and Noel Coward. His novels include The End of the Affair, The Third Man, The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana.

Following are eight of his quotes on writing:

  1. All good novelists have bad memories.
  2. Pain is easy to write about. In pain we’re all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?
  3. One has no talent. I have no talent. It’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.
  4. A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
  5. The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him.
  6. My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.
  7. Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
  8. The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

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Tim O’Brien (b. October 1): “Fiction is for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient.”

1 Oct

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Tim O’Brien (born 1 October 1946) is an American writer whose best known book is The Things They Carried, a collection of stories inspired by his wartime experiences in Vietnam. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 for Going After Cacciato.

Here are some of his observations on the shaping of stories:

  • Fiction is for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient.
  • Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.
  • Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding.
  • The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.
  • Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

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Al-Quebeca: fiction that could be tomorrow’s headlines

27 Sep

AQ ebook thumbMy police procedural AL-QUEBECA, in which a female Montreal homicide detective investigates a hit-and-run and discovers a terrorist cell, has received 30 Amazon reviews averaging 4.5 stars. The top 10:

“A police procedural with such atmospheric detail I was reminded of Inspector Renko of Martin Cruz Smith fame.”

“Fascinating novel with just the right amounts of procedural, mystery and suspense! Detective Sophie Gillette is a mix of tough and tender, trying to keep it together and do her job in spite of her own pain.”

“Annand’s hypothetical telling of an unfolding terrorist strike in Canada chills with its realism. Riveting story-telling on multiple levels.”

“Hard to believe the author’s a man, since his insight into the feelings of his female lead are so sensitive.” 

“It starts as a police procedural, shifts to suspense/thriller and winds up as an action joyride to a surprise ending. Right up there with Clancy and DeMille!”

skull-bomb@50%“What do you get when you weave renegade bikers and a terrorist cell with weapons of mass destruction into a police procedural? So many threads masterfully twisted, then unravelled to a satisfying ending.”

“Very entertaining and just enough truth to be scary. Fiction that could be tomorrow’s headlines.”

“Annand has a knack for quick, realistic, witty dialog. His lead police officer Gillette gives us everything we want in a female character. She’s smart, tough, vulnerable and real.”

“Intense and captivating, very hard to put down. Highly recommended for anyone who likes thrillers and complex police procedurals.”

“A timely subject and a plausible plot. Montreal’s atmosphere is rendered with a touch evocative of Graham Greene!”

ski_mask_crop2~~~~~~~~~

AL-QUEBECA is available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Flipkart, Kobo and Smashwords.

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One-man Canadian crime wave

19 Sep

AA & halloween handsThey call me Canada’s answer to Dan Brown and Michael Connelly. They are my parents. They’re biased, but also great fans of mystery, suspense and thrillers. They fed me a diet of Elmore Leonard, Michael Crichton and Nelson DeMille.

I write novels that offer a cocktail of action, mystery, suspense, thriller, humor and literary pretension. Think of me as Canada’s answer to Larsson, Mankell and Nesbo. Or Hemingway and Spillane mixed in the same highball. Beaten, not whipped.

One reviewer called Harm’s Way the closest thing yet to being the classic Canadian hard-boiled mystery. Set in Montreal, it showcases Lee Harms, a hardened man with a tender heart, in a case involving a local politician’s runaway daughter.

In Hide in Plain Sight, a mystery/suspense, a man impersonates his dead twin to conceal that his own bipolar wife killed him. But sharing a bed with his brother’s wife gives him a libidinous fever, and now someone else wants to kill him.

My New Age Noir series features Axel Crowe, an investigator who uses astrology, palmistry and other tricks learned from his guru. One reviewer called him Sherlock Holmes with a horoscope … who also knows martial arts and plays blues guitar.

Scorpio Rising presents Crowe a three-way murder whose wealthy victims across the USA all have beneficiaries with alibis. From New York to Frisco and the badlands of New Mexico, the trail ends where it began – in the heart of a frustrated writer.

In Felonious Monk Crowe investigates a reporter’s murder at an ashram. His search uncovers a series of Manhattan rape-murders going back 12 years, with connections to sex trafficking, drug smuggling and the theft of an ancient golden Buddha.

Al-Quebeca is a wintertime police procedural. Montreal detective Sophie Gillette investigates a fatal hit-and-run, only to discover a terrorist plot to assassinate a governor, disable the electrical grid, and kill 10,000 hockey fans.

And in a mash-up of genres, Antenna Syndrome dips Raymond Chandler into sci-fi to send up the hard-boiled genre. In a post-apocalyptic New York, an investigator searches for a kidnapped artist fascinated with insects. What a buzz!

www.amazon.com/Alan-Annand/e/B0052MM0PO

www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlanAnnand

 

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Roald Dahl (b. September 13): “The life of a writer is absolute hell.”

13 Sep

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“The life of a writer is absolute hell. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.”

~ Roald Dahl, b. 13 September 1916

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DH Lawrence (b. September 11): “Tragedy is like strong acid…”

11 Sep

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“Tragedy is like strong acid – it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.”

~ D.H. Lawrence. b. 11 September 1885

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Ursula Le Guin: “A writer is a person who cares what words mean.”

2 Sep

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“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well, they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

~ URSULA LE GUIN

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Edgar Rice Burroughs (b. September 1) : “The more one listens to ordinary conversations…”

1 Sep

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“The more one listens to ordinary conversations the more apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take little part in the direction of the vocal organs.”

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs, b. 1 September 1875

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Jeannette Winterson (b. August 27): 10 Rules for Writing

27 Aug

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Jeannette Winterson (b. 27 August 1959

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10 Rules for Writing

  1. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.
  2. Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.
  3. Love what you do.
  4. Be honest with yourself. If you are no good, accept it. If the work you are ­doing is no good, accept it.
  5. Don’t hold onto poor work. If it was bad when it went in the drawer it will be just as bad when it comes out.
  6. Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect.
  7. Take no notice of anyone with a ­gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.
  8. Be ambitious for the work and not for the reward.
  9. Trust your creativity.
  10. Enjoy this work!

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