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Rick Bass: “It’s your duty to lie…”

8 Sep

bass

“As a regular person, it’s your duty to stay on a straight and even keel, not to swing from the branches of trees. But as a writer it’s your duty to lie and to view everything in life, however outrageous, as an interesting possibility. You may need to be ruthless or amoral in your writing to be original. Telling a story straight from real life is only being a reporter, not a creator. Make your story big, magical, more meaningful than life is.”

~ RICK BASS

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William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”

7 Sep

goldman

“Nobody sets out to fuck up your movie. It’s not like the director or the stars wake up in the morning and say, “Let’s screw up this scene.” I wrote a line once that caught on out there in Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.” And they don’t. If we knew what we were doing, every movie would be wonderful. If actors knew what they were doing, every performance would be just swell. It’s a crapshoot. It just is. There’s no answer. I wish there were.”

~ WILLIAM GOLDMAN

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Kurt Vonnegut: “All the great story lines are practical jokes.”

6 Sep

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“If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.”

~ KURT VONNEGUT

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Harm’s Way enters Top 10 in hard-boiled mystery at Amazon

6 Sep

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It’s a mini-milestone! HARM’S WAY has just entered the Top 10 in Amazon’s hard-boiled mystery category. Originally published by St. Martin’s Press in 1992, I revised it extensively in 2012 (see backstory here) and republished it with Amazon and Smashwords.

Since December of last year I’ve offered it FREE on Smashwords to allow people to sample my writing, and thus promote my three other mystery thrillers. During this period, Amazon has toggled the price of Harm’s Way back and forth between free and $0.99. To date, there’ve been almost 15,000 downloads.

So if you like a very fast-paced mystery with a dose of hard-boiled action and dialog, and you don’t get your knickers in a knot over the occasional references to astrology (see that other story here), then scoop up a copy sooner than later.

Have a great day. As for me, I’m celebrating over breakfast with mimosas and — what else? — hard-boiled eggs !

~~~

HARM’S WAY

Montreal investigator with astrologer girlfriend searches for politician’s runaway daughter, only to become embroiled in a plot of corruption, decadence, greed and murder. 

(digital $0.99, paper $8.99) 

http://www.amazon.com/Harms-Way-ebook/dp/B005LVXIA2

Roald Dahl: “Writing is like going on a very long walk.”

5 Sep

Dahl

“Writing is like going on a very long walk across valleys and mountains, and you get your first view and write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe onto a hill, and you see something else and write that. You go on day after day, getting different views of the same landscape. The highest mountain on the walk is the end of the book, because it’s got the best view, when you look back and see everything you’ve done all ties up. But it’s a very long, slow process.”

~ ROALD DAHL

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Doris Lessing: “Trust our own judgment.”

4 Sep

lessing

“Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad – including your own bad.”

~ DORIS LESSING

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Margaret Atwood: “It’s a shark-filled lagoon out there.”

3 Sep

Atwood

“I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you’ve already done the good writing, you’ll still need the good luck. It’s a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back.”

~ MARGARET ATWOOD

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Barbara Kingsolver: “Chain that muse to your desk.”

2 Sep

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“I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.”

~ BARBARA KINGSOLVER

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Leo Tolstoy (Aug 28): “Everyone thinks of changing the world…”

28 Aug

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“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

~ Leo Tolstoy, b. 28 August 1828

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Jorge Luis Borges (Aug 24): “Time is the substance from which I am made.”

24 Aug

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“Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”

~ Jorge Luis Borges, b. 24 August 1899

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