Who’d I say I was?

Who’d I say I was?

I once worked in an office in DC where one of the people was in a very bad auto accident.  When that person came back to work sometimes we would be in the middle of a conversation and they would stop and say, “Who’d I say I was?”  At first everyone thought it was a joke, but we soon learned that the person had suffered some brain damage and at times did not know who they were.

I wonder if all writers have the same problem?  Not brain damage, although that may be true as well, but do we sometimes not know who we are?  Do you become your character?  Do you talk for them?  Feel what they are feeling on the paper?  How deeply do you get into the character’s mind and psyche?

What are you talking about, you ask?  I think we all pattern characters after people we know.  We may give them different names, sex, locations, occupations, etc. but way down deep there is a part of us that knows exactly who that character is based on.  So what you ask?  What if the person is someone you would rather forget about?  Maybe an ex-spouse or significant other that you are killing in a wonderfully horrible way in your project.  No problem.  I do things like that all the time. If you’ve ever wronged me or any member of my family I’m going to really make you pay for it in a book or screenplay.

Okay, so what’s your point, you ask?  By the way, you’re sure asking a lot of questions this week, but I digress.

The point is, at least for me I have a character in one of my mystery series I patterned after an actress I worked with and have become personal friend with as well.  Everyone in my family knows her and most have met her. She’s a lovely lady with grown children.

About a week ago, I was sound asleep and around 3am I stared to talk in my sleep.  I’ll stop here to let you get a drink before you read the rest of this because you can probably see what’s coming.  I have a rough time sleeping and talking is something I do almost every night.  Most of the time its more mumbling than talking, fortunately for me.  I even started singing karaoke one night, and believe me, the mumbling would have been better.

Back to the night in question.  As I said, about 3am, I started talking in my sleep.  Evidently, I was coherent enough for my wife to talk to me as well.  Good little wife that she is, she asked me what I was talking about.  That’s like asking a man what he is thinking about.  The obvious answer as ever man knows, and every woman denies, is sex, food or cars.  You know what the answer is, but you want it to be something you like: “I’m thinking about that lovely weekend we spent with your mother when I moved all her furniture from the house to the garage,  so she could paint.”

Back to me. At 3am the question was, “What are you doing?”  Ready for this?  I said, in words that, according to her, left no room for interpretation or doubt, “I’m on the beach in the Bahama’s with XXXXX.”  That being my actress friend’s name.

Be careful getting too deep into your alternate character.  It may not be a good thing.

The doctor said I will only have a few scars and the bones should heal if I wear the brace for another six weeks.

Keep those cards and letters coming.

 I’ve been writing this blog for several months now and if my math is right, and it usually isn’t, if you divide 25 by 4 which is the number of this blog, divided by the number of weeks in a month except for those that have 5 Thursdays, you get a total of some number.  But that’s not the point of this week’s blog.  What is it, you ask?  It’s time to answer some of the many questions I have received from my faithful, curious and sometimes hostile readers.  I may even take a question from the audience if you raise your hand.

The most asked question is: Who do you think you are to be giving advice?  Hell of a good question and I have an answer.  Like most people who claim to be, are, or want to be writers, I think I have something to say and for that reason you have an obligation to hear it. I realize that I compose on a computer and not on stone with a chisel, so if you like what I have to say and it works for you, great.  If not, change channels.

Next question: Did you really work on all those movies you list on your website?  I did and everything I said about them is true. Trust me…

Another good one.  Do you need anything special to get you in the mood to write?  If you only knew…but I digress.  I usually write early in the morning dressed in my bathrobe, fuzzy pink slippers, my cat curled up on the keyboard, a cup of herbal tea in hand.  If that doesn’t work, lots of Gin and tonic’s do the trick late at night when “those people” come to call and I can’t sleep.

Oh, I see a hand from the audience.  “Did you really write a movie for Playboy?”  Actually, it was for Mystique Films, another company that Playboy owned, and yes it was one of “those” kinds of movies. It’s been on HBO, Showtime and other premium cable channels so it’s not that bad.  And I went to a Playboy party and even took my wife.

Back to the mailbag. You grew up in Georgia.  What was your childhood like?   I was ten years old before I knew a chicken wasn’t a long animal like a snake.  All I ever got was the neck.  I was so poor I couldn’t afford to go barefooted…I could go on, but that’s all the Rodney Dangerfield I remember at the moment.  I had a great childhood, if I can be serious for a moment.  My grandmother and my dad were great story tellers and if I learned anything about the art, it was from them.  I’m an only child, but I have some cousins I think of almost as brothers and sisters.

Here’s an interesting one. Why do you use some of the same names in books?  I have a hard time coming up with character names for one and second, there are several people I think enough of to name characters for them.  Some left us far too young, others are people I served with in the Army…you get the idea.

And last. I have a great idea for a book.  Can you write it and share the money with me? )(*^*(%*&^%)^&* and the equine upon which you arrived.

Jump into the Fire? Or a Casual Walk in the Park?

Jump into the Fire? Or a Casual Walk in the Park?

Let’s start at square one. You’re sitting at your desk, kitchen table, park bench, table at Starbucks or some other familiar place and suddenly a light bulb goes off in your head.  Maybe you hear a voice that nobody else hears, or you see the equivalent of a burning bush. You have an IDEA.  

What do you do next? Do you furiously take notes before the inspiration disappears or goes to another table?  Do you just sit and let the idea boil around in your head until you have enough information to actually begin the process?

You’ve now got a good handle on what it is.  Do you have a scene or an idea?  What? There’s a difference?  The voice tell you it’s time to write about that time you…..fill in the blank.  Did you fill in the blank with an incident or an idea for an entire book, screenplay or short story?  The time you went skiing and fell off the ski lift is a great scene, but unless it caused an avalanche and you survived for a week without food, water, or the Internet it’s probably not a book etc.

Let’s break it down, no pun intended.  You’re on the ski lift, it shakes, shimmers and dumps you to the snowpack some thirty feet below.  Now what? Do you plan out what you’re going to do next or do you just hit the snow and let the story unfold?  Plodding or Plotting.

I know writers who will start their project the day they buy their ski outfit and plan the ski weekend. They know what color the boots are, the size of the chairs on the lift and the name of the operator of the ski lift because he looked like Uncle Charlie.  They can tell you what they thought about as they dropped to the snow, how long they were buried and how they dug out using only their hands and a granola bar they brought as a snack. Those are Planners.

Plodders, usually like me, jump on the ski lift, admire the ski bunnies in line, fall head first into the snow and wonder what I’ve gotten myself into and how am I going to get out as I hear the roar of the avalanche rumbling down the mountain in my direction. I’ll sit under the snow and wonder how I’m going to get out and then I’ll start digging.  I may dig in the wrong direction and bury myself deeper in the snow for a bit but I usually find the right direction and get out.  There are very few holes you dig that you can’t get out of.  Sometimes the best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. 

Once I reach the surface, I have to look around and see where I am and what I need to do.  Do I have to spend a week walking through the snow? Maybe I find a cabin.  Is it abandoned or filled with…fill in the blanks who try to do what with or to me?  Do I escape or join them?  Sometimes when I sit down to write I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about, where I’m going or what I’m going to do when I get there.

Plodding works for me but I can see how it would drive some people crazy.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go write….something.

PS.  I was just notified that DANCING IN THE DARK is one of 10 finalist for the Georgia Author of the Year Award in the mystery category.  The awards will be presented on 16 June.  The book is the first in the Max Maxwell series.  The second book, SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY was released on 7 April.  The awards will be presented on 16 June.

Paul Sinor

https://www.paulsinorbooks.com

All books Available @ amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Sinor/e/B001KCUYRQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1523542653&sr=8-1 

All Aboard the Choo-Choo Train!

Shameless Self-Promotion

My ‘ol Daddy back in Georgia had some great old sayings.  Most of which I thought made him dumb as a red brick when I was a kid and heard him saying them.  As I got older, I began to realize who the red brick was.  I will share one of them with you in a minute because it pertains directly to this week’s blog.

The newest book in my Max Maxwell mystery series will be available on 7 April. It’s called SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY and you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million or your local book store.  For those too young or not a fan, it, like the last one is named for one of the big band songs popular during World War Two.  I figured if the late Sue Grafton could make a career out of naming her books after the alphabet, (tragically she recently passed away after writing the “Y” book,) I could do the same with song titles.  The next one after SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY will be called LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY and it’s already written, so pull out your parent’s old albums and listen to the songs.

Here’s a little teaser for SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.  Max Maxwell is working on a stalking case involving the unhappily married lady he has been seeing when he gets a call from an old army buddy, Bill Hart, who is now running an off-the-books intelligence operation in Washington, D.C.  Bill asks Max to help out with a situation involving another one of his associates.  All Max has to do is pick up a sailboat and get it back across the Puget Sound to Seattle.  He wasn’t told that Bill’s associate was working undercover and had been murdered on the boat or that the Canadian Intelligence Service, a Korean smuggling ring with a deadly mission and a double agent might also be involved.  This will turn out to be a Sentimental Journey Max will never forget-if he even survives.

I will be sending out notices via my facebook and email and any other means I can come up with to get the word out about the book.  I am very fortunate in that I have a publisher and I am not doing this as a self-published book.  The publisher has a website and I have already been asked to be interviewed by several magazines devoted to publishing and mystery books, so that will help.

As with any product or service, word of mouth is the best publicity.  If you drive a Toyota and a friend is looking to buy a new car and is thinking about a Toyota, they are going to come to you for a recommendation.  It’s the same with books.  If you have read any of mine and like them, tell someone, better yet, and this seems to be the hardest thing writers have to do, is get people to write a review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  “Good book” or “Really liked it,” is sufficient.

What’s all that got to do with my Daddy and his advice?  Glad you asked.  One of his many sayings was “If you don’t toot your own horn, you may never hear any music.’

Toot! Toot!