First Draft to Published

1.      It’s scary! For some folks, that’ll be a reason not to read it. But for the rest of you, come on—you know you like a good scare. 2.      The main characters are, as one review put it, “strong characters who the reader can care for even when they aren’t on the best behavior.” And, being aspiring rock stars, they’re not often on their best behavior… 3.      It’s authentic. Maybe not the supernatural bits, but the behind-the-scenes look at a local rock band draws on experiences I’ve had over ten years of playing guitar in local bands. You can almost smell the spilled beer and feel the jolt as the water leaking from the venue’s crappy roof hits the guitar amplifier and zaps the heck out of you! 4.      It’s human. The characters face the kinds of choices we all face on a day-to-day basis, and they make good decisions and bad ones, just like the rest of us. 5.      There are lots...

For those just beginning their writing career, or contemplating embarking on one, please accept a few humble words of advice. First, if you want to be a writer, write. Hemingway said it best when someone asked him how they could be a writer: “Go somewhere and write.” So, go somewhere and write. Write every day. Set yourself a goal, say 1000 words, and write those 1000 words, every day. The object is to write enough, often enough, that the mechanics of building sentences and paragraphs become second nature. You write your 1000 words a day for the same reason a musician plays scales, or an artist sketches, practice. Second, write what you know. This has almost become cliché, but it is often misinterpreted. This does not mean that if you're a high school student in Peoria, you can't write about commercial fishermen in Denmark, though that might be difficult. What it means is if you're a big fan of western fiction and have read every Louis Lamour and Zane Grey novel ever writte...