T-shirt give-away

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon

To enter the drawing for a free, signed t-shirt, just send me a message saying “I’d like to win please!” Simple.

To enter, send me a message

September’s winner was Peter McCay. Congratulations Peter.

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Silence Is NOT Golden

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon
You’ve probably heard the saying, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” I couldn’t disagree more, but that’s probably why I sometimes have a hard time moving forward. I remember many years ago my friend’s wife was leaving him off at school and I looked over and noticed she just didn’t look quite right. I asked if she was alright and she said yes and asked why. “I dunno, you just don’t look good,” I said. “Like you plastered your makeup on or something.” I caught hell from my friend for that, but it was true – instead of enhancing her natural beauty she’d made herself look like a street tart and I’d hoped she’d wipe off all that crap and start over with a lighter touch.

I’ve always thought it best to be honest with people. I have no patience for the bullshit of dancing around trying to convey an opinion through grunts, groans, and hesitation. If you’ve something to say then say it, right? You can’t argue with the truth. This is how we learn. This is how we grow. It’s an off-shoot of so-called “social cues”.

When it comes to writing, truth and honesty often butt heads with ego and the excuse of artistic interpretation. What may appear to be absolute crap to one person may be heavenly art to another. And that’s key – remembering that it’s an opinion through the eye of the beholder.

My goal as a writer is to present the best damned material possible, and part of the process involves developing a thick skin, mostly through objectivity – the ability to analyze opinion without emotion (as opposed to apathy – the state of simply not giving a damn). It raises you out of the depths of being an amateur, builds confidence and protects against arrogance so you end up more professional than prima donna.

I’m very critical of my own work, but my ability to fix flaws is limited to my ability to see them. I’ve spent the past three years sculpting my memoir, The Troubles, honing it into something I think is really good, but I’m not so arrogant as to think my opinion alone is all that matters. I have final say, of course, but that’s not going to be very helpful if my work appeals to me and no one else. So, along the way, I’ve asked for outside opinion and, for the most part, the feedback has been interesting, with some folks thankfully catching some real whoppers for me to fix.

But for some reason, there are others who were very enthusiastic about being a reader and then just said nothing further. I see them post on Facebook, etc. and I send them messages to find out what’s going on. Nothing. I just don’t understand where that comes from. Worse, yet, is when someone asks me specifically to be a reader and then do this. Beyond bizarre.

They say, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all,” is supposed to spare hurt feelings. Truth is, saying nothing might do far more harm than good. So if someone asks you to say something, don’t think you’re doing any favors by remaining silent. You wouldn’t have been asked if your opinion didn’t mean something, and who knows, you may find one of those real whoppers that stands between being laughed at and true greatness. So say something, even “eff you, leave me alone!” That’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative – for everyone concerned. 😉

 

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Genre Diversity: Good or Bad?

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon

I got a Tweet that led me to a blog posting by Martha Carr where she wrote,

“…[T]here’s still one powerful rule that remains, and it can mean the difference between making a comfortable living as an author or just barely getting by despite the great reviews. Think of it as our industry’s Golden Rule and big fat secret.

“Trying to get published, even getting published in more than one genre will greatly reduce your effectiveness at marketing and shrink your overall sales.”

Interesting notion, but I’m not sure I agree at face value. For example, what if the author recognizes a particular genre as being “transitional”? I’ve written a memoir. At best I *might* write a followup memoir, but then that’s as far as my interest in the genre goes. I may use the memoir as a well for a series of YA or, perhaps, my SF books. Or maybe I’ll draw on the memoir for an upcoming YA SF “prequel”.   (shhh…)

Using an analogy, Coke is a soft drink. More specifically, it’s a cola. A&W is also a soft drink, but it’s not a cola. Yet they are both Coca Cola products, as is Sprite which is a completely different genre. So maybe the assertion applies on a different level, like writing novels versus songs or comic books versus infomercials.

Or maybe there’s a key word missing – simultaneously. Part of becoming a successful author is building a brand. Say Stephen King and people think, “horror”. That’s branding. If Stephen King had also put out romance novels, well, you see how that might cause confusion. In the analogy, Coke and Sprite are two genres under the same brand – the Coca Cola Company. You’re not going to see Sprite Cola or Coke Lemon Lime. Get it?

I found out how powerful branding can be years ago at London’s Heathrow Airport. I was waiting for my flight to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and decided to buy a book to read on the plane. I spotted Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Having been exposed to Halloween 1 and 2 movies, I thought “cool!”. Imagine my surprise when the book had nothing to do with Michael Myers.

It all comes down to what you want to be known for. Tell someone you’re an author and they’ll reply, “Really? What do you write?” Better to not say, “Oh, a little of this, a little of that.” If you want to write in more than one genre, consider using a pseudonym. Hey, if it’s good enough for Stephen King, it’s good enough for anyone.

 

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Little White Crosses

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon

LITTLE WHITE CROSSES

Little white crosses, mile after mile

Stark little crosses without a smile

The sky and the soil are the colour of lead

And the poppies are red: blood-red

Little white crosses in clinging grey sod,

Most of them marked, “Known only to God.”

Mile after mile, our acres of Dead

Grow little white crosses, and poppies blood-red.

Poor little crosses without a smile

Brave little crosses, mile after mile

Each holding tight to its near little plot

And all of them saying “You forgot.”

The armies of crosses, march through the years

Enlisting more crosses, bitterness, tears

Sad little crosses, mile after mile

Stern little crosses without a smile

Under a sky the colour of lead

Smothered by poppies blood-red

All dreams, ideals, all love left to rot

By we who remember so much, and forgot

Once-a-year plastic poppies, prayers, and tears

Mean nothing at all to those miles of lost years.

We must simply decide to honour, or not

That which they died for, which we forgot

They don’t need fake flowers in Flanders’s grey sod

They’re the world’s greatest gardeners, those “Known only to God”

Growing real poppies, mile after mile

And little white crosses without a smile

If the crosses keep marching, year after year

What worth our gesture of poppy and tear?

What cost our glory? What price our smiles?

How many crosses? How many miles?

I stand by the grave of a young Irish boy;

A “Skin” from Dungannon perhaps, or the Moy:

The cross says that only God knows, do WE care

As we plant plastic poppies, and bombs, over there?

I envy his dying knowing what for

In the carnage he knew was “A war to end war.”

I am knee-high in poppies and foul Flanders’s mud,

But the stench in the air is of fresh Ulster blood.

Let us remember the mile after mile

Of little white crosses without a smile

Rain-beaten crosses over our Dead

Under skies the colour of lead.

While we remember, we must not forget

That we are spilling their blood even yet!

For “Irish,” or “Ulster” is only a name,

And shame on the one puts the other to shame

—————-

Helene Nixon, 1973

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The Troubles – Mowing the Lawn

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon

It’s hard to believe, looking at the old movie footage rolling past, that my brother was ever not fit and trim. Even in the footage his outward appearance belies an inner ugliness fraught with turmoil and recklessness. After what had happened to him in Louisiana, no one would deny he was broken. Yet those who knew him before “the accident” know he was broken from the very beginning, and that troubles me because, as close as I was all through the years, I didn’t see it until recently.

I know now that the mowing, the energy exerted on an almost daily basis, was his way of distracting himself from the reality of having to be cared for. He wanted to show the world that he was strong and useful and able to take care of himself. But then he’d go off and find Khalid, his friend who sold him hashish, pills, and whatever else. It was fun, Roger claimed. He wasn’t laughing the night he stopped breathing. I woke up to the flashing lights outside and voices in the hall saying, “not responding.”

Roger came back to life some hours later at the hospital. Not on his own, of course, as he was already gone…again. Some quirk of fate, all the medical knowledge in the world, or divine intervention? Whatever it was, instead of leaving him humbled and feeling lucky to be alive, it simply reinforced his feeling of lucky, an attitude he’s had since the beginning.

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How’s The Book Coming?

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon
How’s the book coming?

I’ve been asked that quite a lot lately, and I reply, “It’s done,” which is true – my memoir, The Troubles, is good enough to publish. So what am I waiting for?

I finished the first real draft of my memoir back in 2009 and immediately set out to get an agent. Of the three I contacted, one didn’t respond, the second visited my website an astounding fourteen times and spent a total of some hours there but then never contacted me, and the third wrote me a personal note saying I had a good book but that I needed a platform.

And that’s where I am today – building the platform. Why is that important? Because, my friends, the expert advice from agents is that a platform is not only the key to getting an agent but also critical to any book’s success. So that’s what I’ve been working on, that’s what I’ve been waiting for, and that’s why I asked for help.

Food for thought – once a book is “written” it goes through several sessions of editing, revisions and rewrites until the final manuscript is presentable to an agent. It takes time to write a book, and even more time to get it even close to where it needs to be, especially for a “first timer”. And, occasionally, the writer actually discovers something he didn’t know before, something important enough to trigger needing to look at the story from a different perspective, and that takes time, too. If The Troubles were a simple work of fiction I’d have likely had an easier go of it. But my memoir involves real people with real emotions, and some of those people have risen from the murkiness of the past and made me realize that they weren’t the cardboard memories I once thought they were. Some have even stepped up to the plate and provided me some rich detail of how things were back thirty or so years ago. That had to be accounted for, too, and that took more time.

The day before yesterday I began a blog entry to do with being at a cross-roads of sorts. I’m at the point where I’m wondering if I should bite the bullet, ignore my gut and go for an agent. After all, that’s what people seem to expecting of me. But I ask myself is what I want most simply to have an agent? No, it’s not. I want more than that. Much more. That means for now I wait, I continue to polish, and I come up with ideas to get my story to the forefront of people’s thoughts. Stay tuned.

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Something Different – a Review!

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon
Bengali Girls Don’t – Luky A. Sherman

One day I got a note that one L.A. Sherman was following me on Twitter. Hmm, I thought, who is this person? I clicked on her profile and discovered she wasn’t just a pretty face – she’d written a book that promised to hit on a number of my interests: international travel, foreign culture, growing up in England, youthful rebellion, and much more. So I clicked to follow her. That has turned out to be a very good decision.

Just recently she tweeted that the first chapter of her book, “Bengali Girl’s Don’t”, was available on her website. I clicked on it and immediately became even more interested in her book. For grins I looked it up on Amazon and found it priced where I didn’t need to give it a second thought, and from the get go I was not disappointed.

I’m generally very harsh when it comes to reviewing, mainly because so much that I read is simple retread. I am constantly amazed at how much same old same old makes it to market given how agents and publishers and all the experts in the world keep ranting on about how stories need to stand apart, be different, bring something new in order to stand a chance. A quick glance at all the doom and gloom stories out there speaks volumes. Sorry, but managing a drug-induced smile after the doctors remove the last of your cancerous colon in a last gasp effort to give you one more day doesn’t count as triumph over anything. Anyway, “Bengali Girl’s Don’t” does bring freshness to the arena. It’s not a memoir. Rather it’s a story based on real events and continues to show how truth is stranger than fiction.

Luky begins her story with a tale of graphic violence that grips the reader. It is very surreal, and yet that’s what makes it feel spot on. Once we get past the war, however, the book takes on a more “conventional” feel. Part II details growing up in Bradford, England, and we get a good feel for what life is like for this Bengali girl. She can’t escape the Western influences which, ultimately, sets off the chain of events that consumes so much of her life.
Luky goes to great lengths to give us the flavor of her life, even including many native phrases (which she translates). The native phrases add a certain richness to the story, but I think they were overdone. I felt the flow got bogged down by her having to explain what’s being said. With some terms and phrases the translation went away after a while, but the idea seemed to carry on for too long.

Luky also gives some wonderful images and a solid feeling of what it is like in such households, but I wished I had more often felt what she was feeling and/or experiencing. For example, she writes: “Inside the shed, they scan the walls for bugs and other creepy crawlies whose ickiness turns their stomachs oofhtah, upside down.” I would have loved to be put in that shed. What did it smell like? Was it musty inside? Cob webs? Anything squishy? Dark? She soon tells of mothballs, but that’s in reference to an old sheet in the shed. And when she and a friend get caught shop-lifting the first time? Nothing. I don’t know if this is because she was just that cocky or just left it out. Some kind of emotional cue would have been nice here and elsewhere. She absolutely nails other descriptions – the airport, the “toilet/bath”, the whole wedding thing (not that I would know for sure, but I felt like I was there) – wonderfully chilling, especially in context of the “we’re only going away for two weeks” and how that played out.

Overall I would recommend this book. Some might not “get” the culture stuff, or exactly how the story is unfolding, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. There are a few minor technical glitches and places she used what I’d describe as an odd way to say something – “Abir and Saqir’s two uncles return home deflated,” for example, but the quality of the writing is otherwise very high.

Bottom line – despite the horror she faced, she didn’t really ever feel sorry for herself. She did what was necessary and, eventually, triumphed. How refreshing!

L.A. Sherman’s page: http://lukysherman.blogspot.com/

and her FB: https://www.facebook.com/L.A.ShermanOfficialPage

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Don’t Put It Off

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon

If you’re anything like me, you sometimes think you have more time to do things than you really do. You prioritize your to-do list and get done what seems most important at the time. You figure other things can simply wait.

I do that too often with friends and family. I sometimes feel like I not only need the time to talk but also need something to say. After all, who wants or has time to shoot the breeze over the weather for half an hour? People are busy, right? They’ve got better things to do. So I don’t call when I should and don’t always write when I need to.

These days Pink Floyd’s “Time” plays way more often than I expected. You wake up one day and think where the hell has the time gone? All those things you put off for so long suddenly come into focus, and you feel a sense of urgency to do something about the lost time. Sometimes you get lucky and old friends and family are still intact.

Sometimes they’re gone forever.

Get your priorities straight. Take time to live, and enjoy life while you can.

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The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Part 4

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon
I’ve been watching events in Northern Ireland for some time now mostly because I don’t want the violence to return there. Yet every week it seems there is a report of a bomb, or a shooting, or rioting eerily like there used to be during The Troubles. Talking with others also following the latest news, the hope is that it’s just a small bunch of idiots trying to undo what no one really wants undone. Yet while writing this I’m reading about car hijackings and shots being fired. “Some people appear not to want to live in a peaceful community. They seem intent on causing hurt, fear, intimidation to innocent people living here,” one story reports. Aye, but that’s how it was last time, too.

The Irish Republican Army supposedly reformed to protect the minority Roman Catholics living in Northern Ireland from intimidation and brutality inflicted upon them by the Loyalists trying to force them out. At least that’s what I got from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in his book, Before the Dawn, and such instances of such intimidation and brutality are well documented. But the same is true of Republican intimidation against Loyalists. Neither side is exactly innocent. With the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which side was right or wrong became a moot point. The leaders declared PEACE in Ireland, and with that came peace. Or did it?

I flew to Ireland in 2001 to bury my dad, and while there I was determined not to let the circumstances of my trip overshadow my being there. So while arrangements took shape I ventured out to places that still haunted me, in particular Enniskillen and Portora Royal School. When I arrived in Enniskillen, I drove past a McDonald’s and chuckled, wondering if they served American hamburgers or Irish beef-burgers. I parked the car and walked into the main part of town anxious to see what other changes had been made. There was life everywhere. People going about their business, smiling some, and most of all, not a sign of the concrete barriers and security signs so prominent when I went to school there. I then drove out to Portora – but I couldn’t face actually going up to the school. Instead I decided to look around Gloucester House. To my surprise what used to be the prep school for Portora no longer existed, replaced with modern houses. Somehow the demolition comforted me. Change was good, I thought, and I reflected on just how much change I’d seen that day.

But on my way out of town as evening came, I noticed familiar olive drab Land Rovers had taken up strategic positions on the outskirts. Later, in Aughnacloy, a foot patrol dressed in fatigues and armed with automatic weapons passed by, darting from building to building, keenly on the lookout for snipers…trouble. I went back to Ballygawley for a couple of pints. The Protestant pub was more or less dead so I headed up the town to the Roman Catholic pub and enjoyed live music, laughter, and a warm, friendly atmosphere until closing time when the band started in on the Irish national anthem and everyone jumped to attention. All the fun vanished in an instant.

Ten years have since passed and, as I read the news, I can’t help but wonder if the peace is any more, or less, solid than it was. The Twelfth of July will tell.

 

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A Little Help Goes A Long Way

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Author Richard P. Nixon
I imagine some out there think the writing life is simple and fun. The writer gets an idea for a story and pounds away until the story is down on real or virtual paper. Then the story is shared with the world and the writer lives happily ever after. Unfortunately, there’s a little more to it than that.

Sure, for some, the writing is a matter of getting the words out. Sometimes that happens all the way through, and sometimes it happens in bursts with the in-between time filled with indecision, deep thought, and revision. I’ve seen aspiring writers on the edge of giving up because they lacked the confidence to get those words out and then lacked the confidence to let other people see them, and I’ve tried to lead the charge to encourage them to stick with it, not just by words alone but by editing and providing samples of how I might convey their scene. I hope I’ve made a positive difference for them. But even when you finish the story, you’re not done yet. Now you need to get it out to be seen by others, to be appreciated. The goal is to have people come and ask for more. And that can be the hardest step of all.

There’s a wealth of information on the internet and elsewhere detailing what’s needed to get the word out. If you’re new on the scene, you may not have an exact direction to follow. – you just want to make people aware of your work. The first best way to start is to enlist the help of friends and family, have them tell their friends who’ll tell their friends and so on. In the ideal world, those friends will be the start of something wonderful. Sadly, in some cases, if the friends decide not to help for whatever reason, the whole process grinds to a halt and the writer quickly finds himself in a very dark place. Having folks come back and lecture at length as to why they won’t do the absolute least they could for me on top of that made things worse.

In such a situation it’s critical to remain calm. I tweeted for someone, anyone, to help me figure things out, and one of my Twitter contacts stepped up to the plate loaded for bear with ideas, shining like a torch in the darkness, and it’s made all the difference on many levels. Too many people haven’t a clue how important some very simple gestures can be – they seem prejudiced to the idea that a request for help is code for “hold my hand or, better yet, do it all for me.” I’m constantly amazed at how little help I need but how vast a difference a little help can make. Thanks Lynette.

Lynette Benton (@LynetteBenton) writes, coaches writers, and edits their work. She likes tweets about writing, is the author of Polish and Publish, and has just finished the first full draft of her upcoming memoir: My Mother’s Money. Read her blog at:  http://lynettebentonwriting.com/

 

 

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