Writing is not for the Weak by Julie A Lindsey

First, I need to thank you, Tracy for having me over to your blog! Blog tours are such strange animals. Imagine promoting yourself! It’s a complete freak out. I thought I’d tell you how I ended up on this tour.

About three years ago, I saw a movie I loved. Something drew me in and I discovered it was a book. I devoured the book. It was the first book I read in years. YEARS. But, it left me with an overwhelming need to do the same. I wanted to write something that would provide another person an escape.  So, I got started. I googled “write a book.” LOL I laugh now, but I knew absolutely nothing aside from the fact I wanted to “write a book.”

So, I wrote. And it sucked. And I queried *everyone on the planet* with the suckage. And I was rejected about 100 times. So, I wrote another book. Rinse and repeat. On it went. BUT day by day I began to learn. I joined a critique group who broke things down for me. I started tweeting and stalking and slowly things came together. I made a plan, revised my work and started again. I’m nothing, if not hugely hard-headed.

I started using simple past tense and reading voraciously. I cut the filler words from my manuscripts (that, just, very, and most adverbs) then I nixed the dialogue tags to the minimum. I started to show and not tell. “It was cold.” Became “I warmed my frigid hands with my breath and watched tendrils of breath rise into the air.” Then, I started toeing the water. There’s a way in to every pool, no matter how crowded. I decided to find a way.

I looked for anthologies open to submissions and wrote lots of short stories. I looked for small pressed seeking new voices. I entered agent run contests. Soon, I got the response I went looking for. A small pres, Turquoise Morning Press, liked a 25K word novella I submitted for their upcoming line. That was the beginning of my life as a romance author. I’ve signed five more contracts with them in the 12 months since their first ‘yes.’

Am I a romance author? No. I don’t think so. I’m a reader who likes to learn things and tell stories.

My debut novel arrived in print last week, Death by Chocolate. Knight Romance publishing published this. It’s as far form romance as they come, but it makes me laugh. I like to laugh, and I like to write what makes me smile. Death by Chocolate is a nutty tale of harmless looking women with a mounting body count. I also like irony.

If you’re in the mood to let loose and smile at the inconceivable, try my sweet ladies. But don’t try their goodies. You have been warned. LOL Death by Chocolate is available now on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. I hope it will make you smile : )

If you’re an author feeling discouraged by the insanity that is our industry, take heart. We’re all in that boat. It’s okay to get mad, as long as you get over it and start writing again soon. As a writer, I want you to succeed. Embrace your dream and conquer your goals. As a reader, I want to know that drop dead fabulous stories are coming without end, so I have plenty of amazing, upcoming books to dig into. Now, what are you doing still reading? Get busy!

Death by Chocolate

Ruby Russell has reached her limit. When she discovers her hipster husband has a dirty little secret, she whips him up a Viagra-infused-chocolate mousse punishment, but in the morning, her husband's a stiff. Armed with a lifetime of crime show reruns and Arsenic and Old Lace on DVD, Ruby and her best friend Charlotte try to lay low until after Ruby's son's wedding, but a nosy therapist, meddling minister and local news reporter are making it very difficult to get away with murder.

About Julie:

I am a mother of three, wife to a sane person and Ring Master at the Lindsey Circus. Most days you'll find me online, amped up on caffeine & wielding a book.

You can find my blogging about the writer life at Musings from the Slush Pile

Tweeting my crazy at @JulieALindsey

Reading to soothe my obsession on GoodReads

And other books by me on Amazon

Rehash, Repackage, it's all the same CRAP!

Okay, let me first start off by saying. I understand wanting to see a movie on the big screen, if you never got to see it. For example when George Lucas re-released his first three Star Wars movies, sure it’s nice to see those because many people didn't get to see the first ones on film. But now after messing with the Star Wars films for years George Lucas decided to re-release his crap again in 3-D. But this isn't even starting with the old movies he started with the new one. 

A friend has a 6 year old daughter who wanted to see Episode I in 3D, but the whole time she kept taking off her glasses saying, “This isn't even 3D.” (Just so you know, you can’t truly have 3D, unless it was filmed in 3D, and for kids they love the stuff that flies out at you, but that can’t happen unless it’s shot in 3D.) It’s like when my friend bought Poltergeist on Blu-Ray and it didn't look any different the original… it’s because it wasn't filmed in High Definition. What is happening is people are being duped into paying more money for a product that isn't worth more than the original. So, rent the DVD, or buy it, and don’t waste 14 dollars to see some pathetic attempt at rehashing, re-releasing, and re-reaping all the dollars from your wallet. If you want to see it in the big screen don’t waste your time on the 3D, is guaranteed to be disappointing. Another note, if we keep paying for this obvious exploitation of the consumer, we’ll continue to being force fed crap from our past. Can you say, Titanic in 3D?   

There are plenty of books, scripts, and new ideas floating around. *Me clearing my throat* If we quit paying gobs of money for this old crap, maybe the Hollywood types would finally get the picture. In the last year alone we’ve seen Fright Night, Footloose, and The Thing remakes, and we’ve seen the Lion King, Star Wars I, and Titanic released in 3D. Those are just from the top of my head, I know there’s been more. It’d be sad in 10 years when my kid is grown and all the good movies he gets to see are remakes, or repackaged crap. My dad said years ago, everything comes back around in one shape form or another, I didn’t know he meant literally.

Here’s just a small list of remakes you can look forward too:

It (Steven Kings)

Childs Play

Total Recall (remember Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Red Dawn (remember Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey)

The Great Gatsby

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 3D

The Evil Dead

Jurassic Park

Dirty Dancing

Robocop

The Teenage Ninja Turtles

Carrie

The Crow

Daredevil (This wasn’t even good the first time!)

Dune

Highlander

Judge Dredd

Mortal Combat

Robocop

Scarface

Short Circuit

Tomb Raider

The Warriors

OH COME ON MAN!!! REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Carter would eat the Hunger Games for a Snack

Hunger Games/John Carter:

Okay, just so you know I’m not really a diehard about keeping to a book or comic origin story. I don’t normally mind of you mess with it, as long as the heart of the story is there and it still makes a good movie. For example, I watched the X-Men First Class, and they borrowed characters from all over the X-Men time line, and even messed with how the two main characters met. I didn’t care, because the movie was fun, and it kind of created something neat, clever, and original.

With that being said I come to The Hunger Games, I know that this will fall on deaf ears because of what a tremendous success the Hunger Games movie has become in one week, but I believe they really failed to keep the heart of the story intact. I’m really happy for Suzanne Collins, seeing how this came from her amazing novel. It’s always great to see an author do really well, and she’s done extremely well. I know that she was even the screen-play writer, meaning she was responsible for paring down her novel for the big screen. I’m not sure how the editing process worked in this situation, meaning who was responsible for the final decision on the completed script. But I’m aware that for pacing and just trying to keep the movie from being three or four hours long things have to be taken out. But this is where I was kind of left hanging. There were characters taken out (the Avox, the governor’s daughter who really gave Katnip the Mocking Jay), there was a lot of back-story about Haymitch that I think you miss out on. You only got glimpses of Katniss’s mom and that she had checked out when her husband died. The movie skipped over details about Katniss’s transformation, and how petty her fashion team was. I could go on about how things were left out, cut short, or transformed a little, but that wasn’t even my chief complaint. Here is what drove me nuts, shaky camera for the opening scene of the movie, shaky camera for the hunting in the woods, and in EVERY FIGHT SCENE. I’ve watched Blair Witch Project, and I’ve seen Cloverfield, and even watched the Troll Hunter, so I’m very used to the effect, and enjoy it in limited use, but it was grossly misused and didn’t add anything to the movie, except for one scene with the Tracker Jackers. I could have easily overlooked the changes from the book, to the big screen had they found a director who didn’t rely on cheap camera tricks to try to impress an audience. I understand how fans of the book love the movie, but I think what we really got less than what we paid for, it could have been amazing, but what it felt like was a low budget film with great actors, and piss poor editing. My hats off to the cast and Suzanne Collins for great acting and creating an awesome story, but two thumbs down for the weak attempt of editing a film with so much potential. The movie felt cheap, but the one good thing they did, was advertised the heck out of it, which brings me to…John Carter.

John Carter the movie was taken from three books from Edgar Rice Burroughs written in between 1911- and 1918. Even though the small bit of press I researched said it was based on the first book A Princess of Mars, in all actuality bits and pieces are from the first book and The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars; which were the first three books in the Barsoom series. What the creators did was… they took characters from the books, most of the John Carter’s adventure to Mars, and how he met the Tharks, but changed quite a bit to make up their own story within the context of the books. It’s like seeing a classic from a different point of view using elements of John Carter and the world of Barsoom, and his love for Dejah Thoris.  I think if Edgar Rice Burroughs was alive today, he’d been excited about the changes they made, and what a great homage they paid him. However… it is a shame though to dishonor his memory with such bad promotion. I saw the name John Carter a couple of times at the theater on those standup advertisements, so I searched out what John Carter was. All I really found was a sneak peek trailer, but the trailer didn’t really inspire me to see much more. It would have been a shame if I hadn’t accidentally stumbled upon the books on my kindle reader. I would have missed this awesome world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the God-Father of Sci-fi.

It seemed like the creators of the film must have thought, everyone knows who Edgar Rice Burroughs was, and that he wrote Tarzan, and they must have felt that just putting a couple trailers on TV would just inspire everyone to run to the theater to see a guy named JOHN CARTER. When in fact, I don’t think most of society even knows that he was from the book, A Princess of Mars, and that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote it. Or that he inspired many Sci-Fi writers and directors for a hundred years. Disney, you can’t just throw crap out there and expect that the audience will do the research themselves. You have to spoon feed them in this day and age. There should have been a re-release of the books, commercials advertising food at BK with Woola the cute dog thing. There should have been specials detailing the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs. If you’re going to drop 250 million, don’t you think you should equally pump it up? Make music videos, get a cool soundtrack, put the making up on YouTube, do something else then just make it, and hope the masses will come. It is truly a shame when something so great, and so majestic, gets such a horrible introduction into the world, just to be forgotten in a matter of weeks.

Those who missed the movie missed something that was spectacular, fun, and that really pay homage to a creator of Sci-Fi who wrote these characters, and created this world of Barsoom, and Dejah Thoris one of the most loved women in literature just about a 100 years ago.  RIP John Carter, I’ll miss not seeing you in another movie.

Julie A Lindsey guest blog April 6th

Blog: Julie A Lindsey

April 6^th I’ve got Julie A Lindsey, writer, blogger, and mother of three guest blogging on my blog site. She has several books already penned with two of her books, one called Bloom (already available), and the other Death by Chocolate is available for Pre-Order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Check out her site Http://julieannelindsey.com for details and a trailer for her book Death by Chocolate. She is doing a Blog Tour, and my site is fortunately one of her stops on her tour.

I’m more of a horror, action, Sci-Fi, Thriller kind of guy, and I believe she’s more of a romance type of author but her Death by Chocolate does seem intriguing, watch the trailer and you’ll see why. Also… just because someone doesn’t necessarily fit within your genre doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lot from them.

She’s asked what I wanted her to write about for my blog. I gave her a pretty open ended group of ideas.  

I think what we’ll get is some insight into how she’s created her stories, unsuspected journey’s that lead her to where she’s at  in story writing and life. And… maybe she’ll share about how she scored a book deal. I’m looking forward to reading it myself.

She’s also a very giving Twitter tweeter, become her friend, and she may hook you up with a big group of her followers. 

Two for one deal on Blogs!

Since it's been a while I'm giving you a short two for one blog. Yay!

Man, it’s been a while, I’ve grown so much as a writer, but I still have so far to go. As a new writer I had read some critiques of other writer’s work from literary agents. It seemed the thing they said most was the writer needs to read more, so instead of waiting to hear that myself I went on a binge of reading. I haven’t read so much in my life. I actually went from a couple books a year to well over a crap load this year. My most intriguing find was Edgar Rice Burroughs. Funny story, I was just going through my Kindle Reader App and found a free book called A Princess of Mars. The cover is what caught my interest and it was free so I downloaded it and began to read. Within the first couple pages I saw the name John Carter, yes of the movie John Carter. I’m sure Kindle put it up in the list because of the movie but I was pleasantly surprised with it, and began to read. I have not seen the movie yet, and I hear that it was changed drastically, but it doesn’t ruin my excitement. I just wish Disney would have done a better job promoting it. I saw like three commercials. Anyway, I loved the first book, even though it was written in a time (1913) where most people had to be told in detail what something looked like, because there’s wasn’t a plethora of movies in the day featuring stories of green aliens flying spaceships. Unlike now when I say, “A zombie attacked me,” everyone’s pretty sure what one would look like without me going into details. If you can get past the long descriptions, there’s a fun story to be told. The second book, The Gods of Mars is also a wonderfully creative story that any action, Sci-Fi fan would eat up. You can also see where people like George Lucas and James Cameron got a lot of ideas from.

Part 2: Write the way you want. I’ve been reading a lot of books, and one thing I found out was that format played an important role in my enjoyment of a book. Anyone can drudge through a 30 page chapter, but when it’s broken up into smaller bite sized chunks, it makes the reading (for me), more fun. I had read a James Patterson story (co-authored) and then read The Hobbit. The second book I read in the James Patterson series of Witch and Wizard was dismal, and lacked what its predecessor had to offer, but I was still able to read it, and do it rather quickly because of the short chapters. The Hobbit, which I did enjoy, was a bit of a chore for me, even though it was a shorter book, but the chapters were so long, I got in the habit of saying, “When will this chapter ever end?”  Not that I think it’s right or wrong to have long, short, or no chapters, but it really helps me enjoy a book when I get just get a couple pages in when I have a chance, and not feel like I have to read forever to get to another natural break point.  

The Quiet of the Day!

The Quiet of the Day:

While trying to write, do you ever find yourself out of ideas? Or you’ve worked your way into a corner of your story and you can’t get out? You’ve put on your favorite music, you’ve grabbed a drink of choice, you’ve taken some time out to watch a movie, or read a book, but nothing seems to get you out of this funk.

Try silence. In the mornings while showering I’d come up with some of my best ideas for stories. One morning while showering I came up with an awesome idea for a story and on my way to work, (which used to be a 30 minute drive) I came up with the rest of an outline for the story. Plus, not to get to personal I get some good ideas while on the pot. 

But why, I thought were these the few times I got my really good ideas? It dawned on me… that these were the only times that I sat in silence long enough for my imagination to run wild. So, if you are locked in a corner with a story, the characters lost, and have no hope of seeing the light of day. Lock yourself in a corner, or somewhere quiet long enough for the ideas to start flowing out.

In an age when Angry Birds, Pandora, Facebook, and Twitter are all vying for your time, turn it all off, don’t take your phone into the crapper, leave the music off, and just listen. Of course, at first you may not get anything great, but if and when you do, when you return to your desk, or while driving pull up to a red light, record your ideas. This quiet time, may pay you back a hundred fold.

Also in prayer, people often ask, “How come I never hear God?” I think it’s because all of our time is so wrapped up in entertaining ourselves that we don’t make time to listen. This is something I struggle with, but it’s also where I’ve learned that if I turn everything off, and spend time with God, I’ll have a heck of a better chance to know Him.

Now, I know some people work well with distractions, with music blaring, and people all around them. To a certain degree I do too. I like to have the idea formed, throw in some music, and just let it rip. Sometimes when I want to write action, I write with Metal music blaring, when I want something more dramatic, or maybe slightly romantic, I throw on some Adele. Whatever works for you, is the best. But trying out what other people use, may open some doors for you.

Good luck, and God Bless!

Wolf Head the movie screening

What a thrill!

Last year I was involved as the First AD (Assistant Director) for the making of the film Wolf Head. This was an all Oklahoma venture besides one guy from Dallas. I was involved in some of the preplanning, casting, and then the actually production of shooting the movie, but, once the shoot was completed that’s where I stopped. So I hadn’t got to see the finished version. Last night, I got to see the completed film at Harkin’s Theater downtown for the first time. I was amazed, at how great it turned out and how well the editing worked, considering we had multiple locations needed: parking garage, jail, hospital, and a seriously windy bridge, with very little budget.

Director Ryan “Staples” Scott and Director of Photography Josh McKamie pulled off an amazing feat. Of course there were a small handful of crew members that worked hard to make it happen and I don’t want to forget them, but the film turned out amazing, it was fun, there were a lot of laughs, and a huge crowd got to enjoy it with several of us for the first time. How cool is that?

Film making is hard work, but for anyone who wants to make a film, I encourage you, to write a script, get a camera, and go for it. Or… be a part of a crew. It’s not too hard to find people who need help making movies; it’s actually very hard to find people who want to put in the effort. So, do some research, talk to some friends, read websites that feature local film makers, and get involved. Who knows, you might end up watching a film in a theater that you were a part of, what a great sense of accomplishment.

*Applauding cast and crew and the families that missed their loved ones for the months it took to make the movie*

I spoke with the writer/director about doing an interview for my blog, he totally agreed, so look forward to that.