If It's On The Internet It Must Be True...Right?

Research…Or See How Smart I Am.

I love the Internet.  I hate the Internet.  Sound confusing, but think about it.  As writer’s we probably spend a fair bit of time on the Internet.  We want to know something, we don’t have to go to the library like we did, or in my case, said we did, years ago.  Hit the keyboard, do a few keystrokes, make a couple of false starts and we find what we are looking for.  That’s the part of the Internet that I love.  It’s the false starts that I hate.

Need some information on how many acres were in the original Disneyland?  Look it up and choose from probably a million places that offer everything you ever wanted to know about Disneyland, Disney World, Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Steamboat Willy…or is it Willie?  I now know what kind of car Donald Duck drives and his tag number.  Does that make me a good researcher, smarter, a person who wastes time when he should be writing or a compendium of worthless information?

Want to know the city in the United States that sees the sunrise first every morning?  Just ask me.  I found it when I was looking for something entirely different.  I write mysteries and If the FBI ever, for any reason comes to my house and asks to see my computer, I will never get out of jail.  I have searches buried someplace in the memory bank of my desk top that will lead them to directions for making an atomic bomb, the kind of poison that is not found in a routine autopsy and the penalty for all sorts of horrible crimes.

It’s useful information and I make no excuses for having it on my computer but it’s the other stuff that pops up that I worry about.  I did a search for a comedian who was popular in the early 1950’s.  That led me to a site for some clips from the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  I remember watching the show with my parents, I checked out a couple.  The last one created a link that (I’m holding my hand in the air) I honestly did not realize led to a hard-core porn site.  It took a call to tech support to get rid of it.

But let’s talk about legitimate research.  In my latest mystery, I needed to know how to kill a person in a specific manner.  I had the way, I did not know how or if it would be detected by a medical examiner.  I looked on the Internet to no avail, so I called the medical examiner in the county where I had the murder take place.  I asked some general questions and was told to contact a professor at a major university who specialized in poison research.  We had a great conversation and I was led to a website that I would have never found otherwise.  I did not go into great detail on how the poison was detected, but I could have.  I needed to know but I didn’t think my readers did.

Give your readers enough to let them know you know what you’re talking about.  Don’t get them bogged down in details unless you write techno-thrillers.  If you do then you can go into great details.  That’s what they expect.

Remember, they can’t put it on the Internet unless it’s true.  BTW...Donald drives a 1934 Belch Fire Runabout and his tag number is 313.

As always please feel free to share or comment!

OMG...I'm so famous Becky!

My recent claim to fame! A great write up in the Barnesville GA. Herald-Gazette by Walter Geiger.

You Say You Want A Revolution...

New Year’s Revolutions….

Revolutions?  No, that’s not a typo.  I didn’t mean to type resolutions, although this is what today’s topic is.  Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions? Have you ever made any?  I’m going to go out on a limb here, as they say. (Did you ever wonder who “they” are and why we care what they say, but I digress.)  I’ll bet at some point in your life you made a few.

Therein lies the problem.  It’s much easier to make them than it is to keep them.  Right?  They seem to take on a self-defeating life of their own once we make them and they come around to haunt us till we resolve to never do it again, or start making up new ones for the upcoming year.

Sometime around the first of November we start thinking about the holiday season.  Dinners with family and friends are planned.  Cards are bought, put in a drawer to be either mailed too late or saved for next year, and we consider what we want to change in the upcoming new year.  Some of the most obvious and widely made are: lose weight, quit smoking, get in shape, be nicer to… (fill in the blank) and learn a foreign language.  (A suggestion on the last one:  Call your local bank and “press two.”)

And now it’s Thanksgiving Day.  The family is gathered around.  The kitchen looks like the mess hall for the Third Army with enough food for the entire assembled Soldiers and you have some of all of it.  Next comes football or a nap.  You are so full you think you’ll never need food again and you can hibernate till spring.  After everyone is gone, you have another piece of pie, maybe a left-over turkey leg, some of that sweet potato thingy that Aunt Betty brought and by midnight when you can’t sleep, your first New Year’s Revolution is made.  Lose weight.  Beginning after Christmas dinner and the New Year’s Eve party, of course.  The next morning when you reluctantly step on the scales, reaffirm what you already knew and take a good look at yourself in the mirror, the second one is made.  Get in shape.  Soon.  After Christmas etc., etc.

Six weeks later, it’s New Year’s Eve, drink in hand you toast the beginning of the first day of the new year and the NEW YOU!  Of course, the other hand is filled with a plate of small munchie-crunchies stacked as tall as the Eifel Tower and there is a cigarette clutched in your drink hand.

Twelve hours later you wake up and wonder if you are dead and if you’re alive you wonder why. 

Every rule has its exception and New Year’s Resolutions are self-made rules so… Now for a word of explanation.   You joined the gym and went for almost two weeks.  Eating better or less or healthy takes an effort and you have to work and sometimes go to lunch with Fred and Mary and they’re not on a diet, and you only smoke now when you have a drink…after work with Fred and Mary or at the game with the guys or gals.  You get the picture.  You’ve come full circle.  A Revolution.

Don’t feel bad you’re in good company.  We all do it.  So…if you’ll excuse me, I have to go join a gym, quit smoking, lose some weight, be nice to people who like…. (fill in the blank) and write more every day.

By the Way…did I mention that the latest novel in my Johnny Morocco series came out on December 23^rd?  It’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million etc.  I was going to mention it in Dec as a New Year’s Resolution, but you know what they say. 

Hi Ho Silver! Write Away!!

YOU’RE NOT THE LONE RANGER

If you’re not old enough, this will make no sense to you at all. I was told once the true mark of one’s culture is if you can listen to The William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.  Now, some of you youngsters will maybe ask, “Who is that masked man?”  Oh, wait, that’s what they said at the end of the show, but I digress.  The point is when he and Tonto rode out of town, The Lone Ranger always fixed the wrong, punished the bad guys, made everyone see life in a more pleasant manner and left a Silver Bullet behind.  It seemed to me when I watched the weekly episodes that everyone was waiting for him and Tonto to ride into town, fix everything and leave them a silver bullet.  That silver bullet has taken on a life of its own in our modern world.  It’s the fix-all, do-all, kiss it and make it better thing that we are constantly searching for.

Which brings me to the point of this week’s blog.  You knew I’d ultimately get there, didn’t you?

For us, as writer’s there is no silver bullet.  If there is, I and most of the writer’s I know, haven’t found it.  There are many varieties of what we think are silver bullets.  “If I can only finish this book/shorts story/poem/article I know it will open all the doors I need to write full time.”  “If I can get an agent, I know I will be on the NYT Best Seller’s list.”  “If my publisher would believe in me enough to invest in a publicity tour, I know I’d sell a million books.”  If you’ve ever been to a writer’s conference you have probably heard these and more as writer’s search for their personal silver bullet.

If I remember correctly, (I looked it up so I know I’m right) the Lone Ranger found a silver mine someplace out west where he and Tonto mined silver so they could buy food, feed their horses, buy the make-up the Lone Ranger occasionally needed to fool the bad guys and have a little pocket change for an occasional night on the town. And……Get ready…here it comes…the point of this blog…. HE MADE HIS OWN SILVER BULLETS.

None of us probably has a silver mine in the back yard or on some property we own in Mule Toot, Arizona but we have our very own silver mine nonetheless.  We do the digging every day when we sit down to type/write/compose/whatever we call it.  Finish the book, short story or whatever project you are working on.  Make it so good that someone else finds it interesting enough to buy/publish/or represent you.  Even if you get that one silver bullet, you can’t relax.  Many well-known writers have had series dropped by publishers and had to start again.  We get letters from agents who are leaving the business, paring down their client list or think what we write is not popular anymore and we are suddenly working without a net.  It happens.  To us all.  It will happen to you if you write long enough. 

The solution? Go back to your own Mule Toot, dig around in the mine and find some more silver to make another bullet.  Make several.  Remember, the Lone Ranger gave out bullets all over the old west.

Feel Free to comment, complain or make a statement!