Being a cross-genre writer

Categorizing my writing style has always been a somewhat difficult thing. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, H.P. Lovecraft, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King—these are all authors that have had a profound impact on my writing.

I also loved reading comic books as a child, everything from Tales from the Crypt and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery to Shazam, The Spirit, Marvel and DC comics and everything in between. I never missed an issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. If I wasn’t reading, I was either writing or playing music. 

  

I read a lot of classics—To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein, Animal Farm, A Brave New World, Atlas Shrugged—but I always seemed to have a predilection toward the macabre and the unusual. Working in a bookstore eventually brought me in contact with a lot of newer authors and I began to read different genres. But the ones that really kept me glued to the page were the adventure and thriller novels—Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, James Patterson, John Grisham, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn—the high-octane stuff.

Around 2003, when I began writing my first complete novel, I decided that I was going to blend all my favorite genres into my writing. Horror, fantasy, science fiction and adventure would all have a place in my book. I loved the life-like characters Stephen King created in his books, but I wanted more action. Clive Cussler’s adventures were captivating, but I wanted something darker, more ominous and creepy. James Rollins’ creatures were frightening, but I wanted a touch of the supernatural, creatures not bound by the laws of physics.

So I created DIABLERO, and brought a demon-possessed Blackbeard the pirate back to life in modern times. It was a character everyone knew, but he wouldn’t be just a pirate—he would have powers to raise an army of the dead and open a gateway to another dimension. The adventure begins in North Carolina, but ends on an island in the Bahamas. Creepy and dark, with lots of action and great characters. It was the kind of book I always wanted to read.

I continued my foray into action/thriller/sci-fi/horror madness with a book called LILITH, another myth that was familiar to people, yet enough of a mystery that I could add some embellishment and still make it believable. It’s my biggest selling book to date.

I figured that the problem with blending all these genres together would be finding an audience. For some readers, a book that incorporates all those styles can be somewhat confusing. “I thought this was supposed to be a thriller? What’s with the supernatural stuff?” “This horror novel sucks—it’s nothing but action!” People who read thrillers don’t necessarily like horror, and people who read horror don’t necessarily like action/thrillers. Some people don’t like the supernatural aspect, while others are offended by the military/black ops aspect of some of my stories. This has been made evident by some not-so-favorable reviews. But the good reviews far outweigh the bad ones on all my books—so far.

I don’t really target audiences, or take polls, or check out the latest trends—I write what I would like to read. I feel like I’m filling a niche, here, because there aren’t many writers that do what I do. Authors who love horror read and write horror books; authors who love adventure/thrillers do the same. I’m not a purist—I happen to get an equal thrill from reading a good sci-fi book, a creepy horror novel or an engaging military adventure. But bringing it all together on the page and making it work is the biggest thrill of all.

For more info on me and my work, check out my website, or follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

Why writers need good editors

I’ve done the self-publishing thing, if for no other reason than to say, “I did it.” It was not my first book, however.

DIABLERO, a supernatural thriller that featured a resurrected, demon-possessed Blackbeard the Pirate, was published first in paperback by Nightbird Publishing in 2010 and then by Crossroad Press as an eBook in 2011.

So why do a self-published book, you may ask? Well, I think I can sum it up in one word: vanity. I wanted to get my collection of short stories out there, and none of my publishers wanted to publish a short-story collection. So I figured, what the hey, I’ll just do it myself. Shadowland was published as an eBook in 2011 with Amazon, Sony and elsewhere. 

I won’t say it was a bad decision—it was what it was. But only one of the stories, Gray Area, had gone through any kind of rigorous editing. The rest were stories that I had written and reworked several times. 

I hate to admit it, but it shows. Although several of the stories have since been edited and published elsewhere, (see Shadowland inVoluted Tales Magazine #2), they weren’t really the best they could be. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to any editors that charged less than $1,000 per manuscript, which really wasn’t in my budget. 

I said all that to say this: editing really does make a difference. I love my editors at DarkFuse and Crossroad Press—they give a professional edge to my writing by making sure the story has continuity, catching grammatical and punctuation errors that I otherwise would have missed, and even helping reword things that could be said in a better, more concise way. I would have to pay someone several thousand dollars to do what they do, so I am eternally thankful to have their expertise.

For my second novel, LILITH, a supernatural thriller that puts a mythological creature aboard an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean, I was ready to pay a tidy sum for a good editor. But DarkFuse made an offer before I did so, and author Greg Gifune ended up being my editor, so I was happy.

My next book, GOD PARTICLE, a young adult sci-fi thriller that features Chloe Johansson, a globe-trotting sixteen-year-old MIT prodigy, is due out June 4, 2013 and will be published by Crossroad press. My editor there, David Dodd, did an excellent job catching all my dumb mistakes and I think improved my chances of getting good sales. Not a bad thing. 

If you decide to self-publish, my advice is spend the money and find yourself the best editor you can afford, one that knows the business and knows what to look for in a manuscript. Believe me, the money will be well-spent. Don’t put a half-assed manuscript out there, because readers judge you by the quality of your writing, and if one manuscript isn’t up to par, it could affect the sales of any other books you publish.

Michael Garrett, who once worked with Stephen King and other big name authors, offers an excellent service at a reasonable price for anyone who is interested. I only mention him because I was so impressed with his attitude and work ethic. There are probably many other good editors out there, but do your research and make sure they know what they’re talking about, otherwise you’ll spend a fortune and have nothing to show for it.

LILITH: A character study of Lisa Singleton

An aircraft carrier is like a floating city—when fully loaded for battle, it can carry over 6,000 people, and with a story setting like that, it’s easy for characters to get lost in the shuffle. That’s why they have to have strong personalities.

Enter Lisa Singleton—wife, police officer, mother to be, and as strong-willed and tough as they come.

In my latest thriller, LILITH, I wanted to bring back two favorite characters from my first novel, Hunter and Lisa. Though they had some marital issues, and in fact were on the verge of divorce because of the emotional stress from Lisa’s miscarriage, they patched things up and are now ready to face the world together.

  

I thought it would be unique to have two main characters who kind of share the spotlight, instead of one guy or one woman. I always liked the couple in the Mummy movie franchise, the O’Donnells, because when one got in trouble, the other one would bail them out. Same principal here.

Lisa, like her husband, is bi-racial—African-American and Chinese. She is short and has frizzy, black hair, which Hunter finds very sexy. She has dark, Asian eyes and pouty lips and likes to work out, so she is muscular, but also very feminine.

Her father is a Chinese immigrant who came to America and became a police officer. He married the daughter of the chief of police, which was frowned on at first by family members on both sides, but was eventually accepted. Lisa was raised in the small town in North Carolina where she met Hunter.

After high school, Lisa’s love of animals and nature coupled with the admiration she had for her father, led her to become a park ranger. She covers the several-thousand-acre Dismal Swamp State Park on the North Carolina side of the border, just miles from where she was raised in River City.

Not only is Lisa a trained law-enforcement officer, she is a third-degree black belt in a type of Kung Fu known as Wing Chun. She also taught Hunter, who managed to earn his own black belt.

Something else Lisa learned as a park ranger was photography. She loves photographing the wild flowers and trees that grow throughout the park, as well as the bears, wildcats, deer and rabbits that inhabit it. Her proficiency with the camera was the reason Hunter was able to convince his editor at the newspaper to send her along, since their regular photographer had come down with the flu.

Hunter and Lisa go through hell in LILITH, literally, as they help the Navy fight a power that is not even supposed to exist. Lisa rides an emotional roller coaster throughout the story and must draw on the strength of her faith in God, in her husband, and in herself. She’s sly, smart and quick-witted, but far from perfect. Her flaws become apparent in LILITH, but I think you’ll find that her humanity outweighs her flaws.

Next time, we’ll take a look at the main protagonist herself: LILITH. Thanks and happy reading!

Cashing In and Selling Out

I always hear people talk about authors who are sellouts, i.e. an author that becomes popular. A good example of this is J.K. Rowling. Before becoming a multi-millionaire, Ms. Rowling lived in what most would describe as poverty, eking out a living writing books that weren’t big sellers. The same with Stephen King, who mostly wrote short fiction and taught high school English; or John Grisham, who famously sold his first novel out of the trunk of his car. All of these authors would be considered successful by most standards, but to some, they are sellouts. Why?

People come up with lots of different reasons for thinking someone is a sellout. The biggest offenders are the authors who let someone else publish their books instead of doing it themselves. In the publishing industry, most self-published books are ignored, and for good reason—most have never had the advantage of a good editor going over the manuscript. Words are misspelled, punctuation is off, grammar is atrocious, the plot has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese, the characters are shallow and one-dimensional, or the story just plain stinks.

Don’t get me wrong, I have friends that have published some wonderful books, but virtually anyone with enough money can self-publish. And when it comes time to get an agent to sell your next book, guess what? Your self-published book, unless it was a huge seller, will be counted as a big zero. Unfortunate, but that’s the way the cookie bounces.

Another form of sellout is the writer who decides to write something, perhaps in another genre, that is a breakout best-seller. The loyal fans that had been following her for the last ten or so years are incensed that said writer could do such a thing—sell out to the big corporate publishers and actually—gasp!—make money! How could she?

But it’s not about authors following current trends, though that does happen. I mean, how many vampire novels have you seen lately? But often, an author will tire of writing the same old thing and go a different direction or simply write a book that has wide appeal. A good example of this is Walter Moseley, who writes everything from science fiction to mystery and even erotica. I have author friends with four or five unpublished manuscripts who were ecstatic when they were finally able to sell a novel. Sellouts? Hardly. I call it something else—patience.

I have been asked so many times why I bother trying to find an agent or why I decided to go with an actual publisher for my first book instead of doing it myself and keeping all the rights. But guess what? I retained all the rights to my book after it got published, albeit to a larger audience than I ever could have gotten, or would have had time to get, on my own. My publisher gave me a lot of encouragement and insight, edited my book, listened to my input, printed, distributed and then marketed my book. And they even paid me!

Guess that makes me a sellout.